It may strike the average reader as odd to be told that such definitions bristle with ambiguities, and that it is by no means easy to draw a sharp line between doctrines which everyone would admit to be egoistic, and others which seem more doubtfully to fall under that head. "Happiness," "good," "advantage," "self," all are terms which call for scrutiny, and which set pitfalls for the unwary.
96. CRASS EGOISMS.—We may best approach the subject of what may properly be regarded as constituting egoism, by turning first to one or two "terrible examples."
No one would hesitate to call egoistic the doctrine of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, the errant disciple of Socrates. He made pleasure the end of life, and taught that it might be sought without a greater regard to customary morality than was made prudent by the penalties to be feared as a consequence of its violation. Where the centre of gravity of the system of the Cyrenaics falls is evident from their holding that "corporeal pleasures are superior to mental ones," and that "a friend is desirable for the use which we can make of him." [Footnote: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, "Aristippus," viii.]
The doctrine of the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, is as unequivocally egoistic.
"Of the voluntary acts of every man," he writes, [Footnote: Leviathan, Part I, xiv.] "the object is some good to himself;" and again, [Footnote Ibid. xv.] "no man giveth, but with intention of good to himself; because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts the object is to every man his own good."
He leaves us in no doubt as to the sort of good which he conceives men to seek when they practice what has the appearance of generosity. Contract he calls a mutual transference of rights, and he distinguishes gift from contract as follows:
"When the transferring of right is not mutual, but one of the parties transferreth, in hope to gain thereby friendship, or service from another, or from his friends, or in hope to gain the reputation of charity or magnanimity, or to deliver his mind from the pain of compassion, or in hope of reward in heaven, this is not contract but gift, free gift, grace, which words signify the same thing." [Footnote: Ibid. I, xiv. The italics are mine. It was thus that Hobbes accounted for his giving a sixpence to a beggar: "I was in pain to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my alms, giving him some relief, doth also ease me." Hobbes, by G. C. ROBERTSON, Edinburgh, 1886, p. 206.]
There is a passage from the pen of the British divine, Paley, which appears to merit a place alongside of the citations from Hobbes, widely as the men differ in many of their views. It reads:
"We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be a 'violent motion' to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practice virtue, or to obey the commandments of God." [Footnote: Moral Philosophy, Book II, chapter ii.]
97. EQUIVOCAL EGOISM?—The above is unquestionably egoism. The man who accepts such a doctrine and consistently walks in the light must be set down as self-seeking. But self-seeking, as understood by different men, appears to take on different aspects. Shall we class all those who frankly accept it as man's only ultimate motive with Aristippus and Epicurus and Hobbes?