pass. In the first place, the
desire for self-aggrandisement, which always has the push of Nature's
expansive forces behind it, would certainly survive that ill-omened
day. Indeed, it were well that it should do so; for "while there is
life, there is hope," and when the soul is ceasing to grow, it is
through the desire for self-aggrandisement that Nature makes her last
effort to keep it alive, by compelling it to energise on one or two
at least of the many sides of its being. In the second place, the
desire would gradually cease to be resolvable into the desire for
continued growth, and would gradually transform itself into the
desire to glorify and make much of the ordinary self, to minister to
its selfish demands, to give it possessions, riches, honour, power,
social rank, and whatever else might serve to feed its self-esteem,
and make it think well of itself because it was well thought of by
"the world." And in the third place, in its effort to glorify and
make much of the ordinary self, the desire would, without a moment's
compunction, see other persons pushed to the wall, trampled under
foot, slighted and humiliated, robbed of what they valued most,
outraged and wounded in their tenderest feelings. It is my firm
conviction that at the present day three-fourths of the moral evil in
the world, or at any rate in the Western world, are the direct or
indirect outcome of egoism,--egoism which, as a rule, is mean, petty,
and small-minded, but is often cruel and ruthless, and can on
occasion become heroic and even titanic in its capacity for evil and
in the havoc that it works,--egoism which in ninety-nine cases out of
a hundred is generated by the desire for self-aggrandisement having
outlived its better self, the desire to grow.

If arrested growth is the chief source of malignant egoism, there is
an obvious remedy for the deadly malady. The egoist must re-enter the
path of self-realisation. His great enemy is his lower self;[34] and
the surest way to conquer this enemy is to outgrow it, to leave it
far behind. When the path of self-realisation has been re-entered,
when the soul has resumed the interrupted process of its growth, the
desire for self-aggrandisement will spontaneously transform itself,
first into the desire for further growth, and then into the desire
for outgrowth or escape from self, and will cease to minister to the
selfish demands of the lower self; and as the lower self is all the
while being graduall