coming along
toward us proposing to love us a little while the way he loves himself,
that our permission might have been asked. If there is one inconvenience
rather than another in our modern Christian society, it is the general
unprotected sense one has in it, the number of people there are about in
it (let loose by Sunday-school teachers and others) who are allowed to
go around loving other people the way they love themselves. A codicil or
at least an explanatory footnote to the Golden Rule, in the general
interest of neighbours, would be widely appreciated. How shall a man
dare to love his neighbour as himself, until he loves himself, has a
self that he really loves, a self he can really love, and loves it?
There is no more sad or constant spectacle that this modern world has to
face than the spectacle of the man who has overlooked himself, bustling
about in it, trying to give honour to other people,--the man who has
never been able to help himself, hurrying anxious to and fro as if he
could help some one else.

It is not too much to say "Charity begins at home." Everything does. The
one person who has the necessary training for being an altruist is the
alert egoist who does not know he is an altruist. His service to society
is a more intense and comprehensive selfishness. He would be cutting
acquaintance with himself not to render it. When he says "I" he means
"we," and the second and third persons are grown dim to him.

An absolutely perfect virtue is the conveying of a man's self, with a
truth, to others. The virtues that do not convey anything are cheap and
common enough. Favours can be had almost any day from anybody, if one is
not too particular, and so can blank staring self-sacrifices. One feels
like putting up a sign over the door of one's life, with some people:
"Let no man do me a favour except he do it as a self-indulgence." Even
kindness wears out, shows through, becomes impertinent, if it is not a
part of selfishness. It may be that there are certain rudimentary
virtues the outer form of which had better be maintained in the world,
whether they can be maintained spiritually--that is, thoroughly and
egotistically, or not. If my enemy who lives under the hill will
continue to not-murder me, I desire him to continue whether he enjoys
not-murdering me or not. But it is no credit to him. Except in some
baldly negative fashion as this, however, it is literally true that a
man's virtues are of little account