The superiority of omniism to egoism is in its being a later and more complex development, an organic superiority. As the single cell is lower than the organism, so cell-consciousness, if there be such, is lower than self-consciousness, and as the single organism is lower than the social organism so self-consciousness is lower than social consciousness. Egoism is common to all beasts, is perfectly natural, useful, right; but omniism is a human distinction, progressively developed as we become socialised.
My “self” is my conscious area of working machinery, wherewith I receive impressions and produce expressions, and if I were a tenfold Siamese twin—if I felt, and thought, and worked with the bodies of twenty men—those twenty men would be my “self,” and to care for them would be as “selfish” as it is for a solitary animal to care for itself, and as perfectly right. Not to care for them, to be only actively conscious of my twentieth part “self,” would be a condition of arrested development, pitiable rather than blameworthy. In a social condition of existence, the life and prosperity of each member is absolutely interwoven with that of the others, of the whole, and not to recognise this, and act accordingly, is to manifest an inferior plane of development.
Organic relation of any sort is mutual, involving mutual obligation, duty, and, if necessary, sacrifice. When a physical body is starving to death, it is impressive to note the gradual surrender of its constituent parts in the order of their importance. First, he calls in all his savings,—the fat. Then the muscles slowly feed in their store. Lastly the “vital organs.” And all this is unconscious, managed by the long-established mechanism inside, without any dictation from the cerebral consciousness the man calls “self.”
Our internal social functions, the immediately necessary economic processes, may proceed unconsciously to quite a degree of development under the direction of egoism, because, as the social life is the main protection of the individual, so the interests of the individual and of society are in many ways identical, and the individual may serve society very fully and never dream that he is doing anything more than to “take care of himself.” But Society cannot proceed far in development before the interests of the whole may involve a temporary subversion of the interests of the past, and here a beneficial social conduct requires social consciousness.
Our carefully preserved ego concept acts mischievously in proportion to the progress of society. The more complex the social process, the larger the social interests involved, the more injurious is this primitive spirit of egoism. The selfishness of a peasant is far less harmful than the selfishness of a railroad-owner. In the orderly development of social economics this would have been taken care of by the natural extension of feeling accompanying the extension of action, but that has been checked, as usual, by our mental heirlooms. Nevertheless we can observe this natural relation of action and feeling in spite of our opposition.
The growth of altruism in certain special industries is most instructive to study, as showing precisely what conditions most regularly and rapidly develop it. Look, for instance, at the distinctive characteristics educed by the industries of agriculture and navigation.
Sailors, as a class, are generous, quick in heroism, licentious, intemperate, and profane.
Farmers, as a class, are by no means generous—frequently stingy; you never heard of a sailor who was a miser, but often of farmers who are such. The farmer is not quick to heroism, but, on the contrary, is slow to recognise his class-needs, hard to organise, prone to the most primitive individualism. On the other hand the farmer is comparatively chaste, and temperate, and guarded in speech.
Why these obvious distinctions, in men of the same race, class, and time, often of the same families? As obviously from the difference in their industries.
The farmer is engaged in our most remote and ancient industry, the one nearest the bottom, in fact it is the bottom of real social growth; only the cattle-keeper stands between the farmer and the savage. The farmer is more nearly self-supporting than any other member of society. He is still in the short-circuit activities of the self-feeder; while his surplus product does in truth feed the world and give us all a chance to grow, he sees nothing of the world he feeds, and, blinded by our customs of exchange, thinks that in selling corn he is but feeding his family. Therefore the farmer is naturally egoistic—inevitably so unless he recognises the social nature of his function.