Human nature and the social order

by Charles Horton Cooley

One who has tact always sees far enough into the state of mind of the person with whom he is conversing to adapt himself to it and to seem, at least, sympathetic; he is sure to feel the situation. But if you tread upon the other person’s toes, talk about yourself when he is not interested in that subject, and, in general, show yourself out of touch with his mind, he very naturally finds you disagreeable. And behavior analogous to this in the more enduring relations of life gives rise to a similar judgment.

So far as there is any agreement in judgments regarding selfishness it arises from common standards of right, fairness, and courtesy which all thoughtful minds work out from their experience, and which represent what the general good requires. The selfish man is one in whose self, or in whose style of asserting it, is something that falls below these standards. He is a transgressor of fair play and the rules of the game, an outlaw with whom no one ought to sympathize, but against whom all should unite for the general good.

It is the unhealthy or egotistical self that is usually meant by the word self when used in moral discussions; it is this that people need to get away from, both for their own good and that of the community. When we speak of getting out of one’s “self” we commonly mean any line of thought with which one tends to be unduly preoccupied; so that to escape from it is indeed a kind of salvation.

There is perhaps no sort of self more subject to dangerous egotism than that which deludes itself with the notion that it is not a self at all, but something else. It is well to beware of persons who believe that the cause, the mission, the philanthropy, the hero, or whatever it may be that they strive for, is outside of themselves, so that they feel a certain irresponsibility, and are likely to do things which they would recognize as wrong if done in behalf of an acknowledged self. Just as the Spanish armies in the Netherlands held that their indulgence in murder, torture, and brutal lust was sanctified by the supposed holy character of their mission, so in our own time the name of religion, science, patriotism, or charity sometimes enables people to indulge comfortably in browbeating, intrusion, slander, dishonesty, and the like. Every cherished idea is a self: and though it appear to the individual, or to a class, or to a whole nation, worthy to swallow up all other selves, it is subject to the same need of discipline under rules of justice and decency as any other. It is healthy for everyone to understand that he is, and will remain, a self-seeker, and that if he gets out of one self he is sure to form another which may stand in equal need of control.

Selfishness as a mental trait is always some sort of narrowness, littleness or defect; an inadequacy of imagination. The perfectly balanced and vigorous mind can hardly be selfish, because it cannot be oblivious to any important social situation, either in immediate intercourse or in more permanent relations; it must always tend to be sympathetic, fair, and just, because it possesses that breadth and unity of view of which these qualities are the natural expression. To lack them is to be not altogether social and human, and may be regarded as the beginning of degeneracy. Egotism is then not something additional to ordinary human nature, as the common way of speaking suggests, but rather a lack. The egotist is not more than a man, but less than a man; and as regards personal power he is as a rule the weaker for his egotism. The very fact that he has a bad name shows that the world is against him, and that he is contending against odds. The success of selfishness attracts attention and exaggeration because it is hateful to us; but the really strong generally work within the prevalent standards of justice and courtesy, and so escape condemnation.

There is infinite variety in egotism; but an important division may be based on the greater or less stability of the egotists’ characters. According to this we may divide them into those of the unstable type and those of the rigid type. Extreme instability is always selfish; the very weak cannot be otherwise, because they lack both the deep sympathy that enables people to penetrate the lives of others, and the consistency and self-control necessary to make sympathy effective if they had it. Their superficial and fleeting impulses are as likely to work harm as good and cannot be trusted to bring forth any sound fruit. If they are amiable at times they are sure to be harsh, cold, or violent at other times; there is no justice, no solid good or worth in them. The sort of people I have in mind are, for instance, such as in times of affliction go about weeping and wringing their hands to the neglect of their duty to aid and comfort the survivors, possibly taking credit for the tenderness of their hearts.

The other sort of egotism, not sharply distinguished from this in all cases, belongs to people who have stability of mind and conduct, but still without breadth and richness of sympathy, so that their aims and sentiments are inadequate to the life around them—narrow, hard, mean, self-satisfied, or sensual. This I would call the rigid type of egotism because the essence of it is an arrest of sympathetic development and an ossification as it were of what should be a plastic and growing part of thought. Something of this sort is perhaps what is most commonly meant by the word, and everyone can think of harsh, gross, grasping, cunning, or self-complacent traits to which he would apply it. The self, to be healthy or to be tolerable to other selves, must be ever moving on, breaking loose from lower habits, walking hand-in-hand with sympathy and aspiration. If it stops too long anywhere it becomes stagnant and diseased, odious to other minds and harmful to the mind it inhabits. The men that satisfy the imagination are chastened men; large, human, inclusive, feeling the breadth of the world. It is impossible to think of Shakespeare as arrogant, vain, or sensual; and if some, like Dante, had an exigent ego, they succeeded in transforming it into higher and higher forms.

Selfishness of the stable or rigid sort is as a rule more bitterly resented than the more fickle variety, chiefly, no doubt, because, having more continuity and purpose, it is more formidable.

One who accepts the idea of self, and of personality in general, already set forth, will agree that what is ordinarily called egotism cannot properly be regarded as the opposite of “altruism,” or of any word implying the self-and-other classification of impulses. No clear or useful idea of selfishness can be reached on the basis of this classification, which, as previously stated, seems to me fictitious. It misrepresents the mental situation, and so tends to confuse thought. The mind has not, in fact, two sets of motives to choose from, the self-motives and the other-motives, the latter of which stand for the higher course, but has the far more difficult task of achieving a higher life by gradually discriminating and organizing a great variety of motives not easily divisible into moral groups. The proper antithesis of selfishness is right, justice, breadth, magnanimity, or something of that sort; something opposite to the narrowness of feeling and action in which selfishness essentially consists. It is a matter of more or less symmetry and stature, like the contrast between a gnarled and stunted tree and one of ample growth.

The ideas denoted by such phrases as my friend, my country, my duty, and so on, are just the ones that stand for broad or “unselfish” impulses, and yet they are self-ideas as shown by the first-personal pronoun. In the expression “my duty” we have in six letters a refutation of that way of thinking which makes right the opposite of self. That it stands for the right all will admit; and yet no one can pronounce it meaningly without perceiving that it is charged with intense self-feeling.