EGOISM
328
EGOISM
that he did not rise to the occasion; he granted the
sectarians concessions emphatically disapproved of by
the king and assumed a quite equivocal attitude in the
matter of tlie iconoclasts. It is true that he alleged,
in excuse, that there were no troops at his disposal and
that he was therefore rendered powerless. On the
other hand, he refused to take part in the plots against
the Government, and when the Duke of Alva arrived
in the Netherlands, he would not follow the Prince of
Orange into exile, saying that his was a clear conscience.
This attitude cost him his life. With the Count of
Hoorn he was arrested by the orders of the duke and
condemned to death, despite his appeal to the privilege
of the Golden Fleece. Both were declared guilty of
high treason by the Conseil des Troubles, a court es-
tablishetl by the Duke of Alva, and which was his
servile instrument. The two friends were beheaded
amid universal grief. Egmont met his death with dig-
nity and Christian resignation; he protested to the
last moment his devotion to his religion and his king,
and to the hitter's compassion recommended his wife,
who, through the confiscation of his property, was left
penniless with the care of eleven children. Egmont
had been imprudent, but was guilty of no crime. His
death was thenceforth one of the principal grievances
of the Low Countries against the Spanish Government.
De B.w.vy, Proci'S dit comte d'Egmont et pieces jitstifU^afivcs
(Brussels, 1S53): Df.\tllers, L*? Journal de Nicolas de Lan-
des, procur.nr Qrtn'rrd du Comte d^Egmont in Bulletin de la
Commission rm/ulr J' IIiMoire (ISSl), fourth series. IX: Juste.
Le eotntc d' EqmonI ,1 Ir comte de Homes (Brussels, 1862); Pbes-
COTT, History of Philip 11 (1855-59).
GODEFKOID KURTH.
Egoism (Lat. ego, I, self), the designation given to those ethical systems which hold self-love to be the source of all rational action and the determinant of moral conduct. In a broad use of the term any sys- tem might be called egoistic which makes any good of the ego the end and motive of action. The name, however, has been appropriated by usage to those systems which make happiness, pleasure, or personal advantage the sole end of conduct. In one form or another and with various modifications, the principle pervades the theories of the CjTenaic, Epicurean, Utilitarian, and Evolutionary Schools; and, slightly disguised, it lurks at the bottom of utilitarian altru- ism. Its typical expression is to be found in Hobbes and Mandeville, while Jeremy Bentham, combining it with the other cognate principle, that pleasure and pain are the only good and evil, formulates it in its full character as egoistic hedonism. Two of Bentham's statements, when taken together, set forth concisely the egoistic doctrine. " Pleasure is itself a good, nay, setting aside immunity from pain, the only good. Pain is in itself an evil, and indeed without exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil, have no meaning." (Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap, ix.) "The search after motives is one of the prominent causes of man's bewilderment in the in- vestigation of the question of morals. But this is a pursuit in which every moment employed is a moment wasted. All motives are absolutely good, no man has ever had, can, or could have a motive different from the pursuit of pleasure or shunning of pain." (Deon- tology, vol. I, p. 126.) The undisputed fact that men do experience sentiments of benevolence and perform disinterested actions offers an obvious difficulty to the egoist. Hobbes seeks to evade it by resolving altru- istic impulses into personal hopes and fears. Later hedonists, recurring to the principle of the association of ideas, contend that virtue, which at first is pursued only for the pleasure it brings, comes later on, through a confusion of means and end, to be pursued for its own sake. Innimicrable analyses have shown that pleasure and pain are not measurable, and still less commensurable. The scheme devised by Bentham for estimatinpr the Quantity of different pleasures by
considering their various dimensions — intensity, dura-
tion, nearness, certainty, purity (freedom from pain),
fruitfulness — is commonly regarded as a piece of
absurdity.
This fundamental postulate of egoistic hedonism is, therefore, fallacious. But a deeper and more perni- cious vice of the system lies in its primary principle that self-interest is the only motive of himian action This doctrine reduces all virtue to mere selfish calcula- tion, it outrages our liveliest moral feelings by resolv- ing the highest and noblest impulses into a base piu-suit of personal pleasiu-e. To say that man is incapable of acting from any motive other than self- interest is to degrade human nature. Mankind at large understands very clearly that self-interest is one thing and virtue quite another; that self-sacrifice and heroic devotion do exist, and are not vice and immoral- ity ; that a worthy action challenges our approbation in proportion to the disinterestedness of the agent. Let it become known that the hero of what we at first con- sidered a brilliant act of self-sacrifice had after all no other motive than to obtain some advantage for him- self, and immediately he appears but a vulgar mer- cenary. As Lecky says: "No Epicurean could avow before a popular audience that the one end of his life was the pursuit of his own happiness without an out- burst of mdignation and contempt, no man could conscientiously make this — which according to the selfish theory is the only rational and indeed possible motive of action — the deliberate object of all his undertakings without his character becoming despic- able and degraded." (European Morals, vol. I, p. i35.) Besides, if the egoistic impulse is made the sole and unconquerable motive of action, it is idle to speak of obligation and duty. Nor can the hedonist, consistently with his theory, claun that he safeguards the pre-eminent value of virtue by recognizing the happiness derivable from it to be the highest form of pleasure. For if one kind of conduct yields this pleasure, while another does not, then evidently there must be some essential difference, unaccounted for in the egoistic and hedonistic theories, between right and wrong conduct, in virtue of which they produce con- trary results of happiness and pain for the agent. But moral judgments are not resolvable into estimates of self-interest ; and if we commit ourselves to classifying conduct purely by the advantages, in terms of the pleasure and pain, to be reaped from it, we shall be forced to appraise as virtuous actions which the rea- sonable j udgment of men condemns as immoral ; while, on the other hand, we shall be compelled to brand as wrong acts of self-sacrifice such as, in all life and litera- ture, challenge the highest honour and reverence.
At the bottom of the errors of egoistic hedonism there lies a truth which this system misinterprets and perverts. However complete and disinterested we may be, we can never strip ourselves of self. The constitution of his nature compels man to seek his good, however he may err in the deliberate choice that he makes among the various goods that solicit his efforts. The end constituted for him by God is to reach that highest good which consists in realizing the moral perfection of his nature. This good is to be sought for its own sake chiefly, and in its train follows happiness as, if the expression may be permitted, an automatic consequence. Hence in pursuing the moral good. I am implicitly pursuing my own happi- ness. This self-realization is not egoism; for egoism makes self the centre, the beginning and the end of action. On the other hand, the virtuous man sub- ordinates himself to the moral good, which in the last analysis is identified with Ood. In this sense, as Aristotle points out. the good man may be said to be a self-lover. " For he gives to himself what is most honourable, and the greatest goods, and gratifies the authoritative part of liimself, and obeys it in every- thing. Therefore, he must be a self-lover, after a dif-
