Morality must therefore in the future consist of a common social impulse—it must itself become social. This impulse must overthrow not only egotism, but also the exclusiveness of individual sympathies. We are still, alas, far from this goal! The family is often a thieves’ kitchen; patriotism is a prolific parent of wars; while communities and societies, however noble their objects may be, readily degenerate into petty sects and cliques.
And now comes yet another difficulty, namely, the frequent lack of harmony between the ethical motives which inspire an action and its real moral value.
“Ich bin
Ein Theil von jener Kraft
Die stets das Böse will
Und stets das Gute schafft,”
says Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust.[B] Let us say often instead of always, and mention also that other Power which often wills the good and yet does the evil, and we have the well-known picture of the intelligent, ambitious egotist, who, without any sense of duty, achieves great and good results; and that of the foolish, infatuated altruist, who devotes the whole might of his zeal for duty to the service of socially pernicious forces!
[B] “I am a part of that power which always wills the evil and always does the good.”
As a result of exaggerating the above-mentioned phenomena certain theorists have imagined that ethics can be founded upon pure egotism. But this is a mistake. Without the altruistic impulses of sympathy and duty among its individual members no common social existence can thrive; on the contrary, it must degenerate.