What makes a man a man is the way he takes all the knowledge, the penetrating lively enriching knowledge his selfishness gives—his vision of what he wants for himself, and all the broadening enriching knowledge his unselfishness gives—his imagination about what he wants for others, and pours the two visions together.
The law of business is the law of biology—action—reaction—interaction. I + You = We.
It is getting to be reckless for the people in other nations to sit around and gossip about how bad it is for the Germans to be so selfish. It is reckless for capital to gossip about how selfish labor is—and for labor to putter away trying to make capital pure and noble like a labor union.
There are far worse things than selfishness in people.
Being fooled about oneself is worse because it is more difficult to get at, meaner, more cowardly and far more dangerous for others.
This chapter has been written so far on a pad in my pocket while inhabiting or rather being packed in as one of the bacilli with twenty other men, in the long narrow throat or gullet of a dining-car. When I was swallowed finally and was duly seated, the man who was coupled off with me—a perfect stranger who did not know he was helping me write this chapter in my book, reached out and started to hand himself the salt and then suddenly saw I might want it too and passed it to me.
He summed up in three seconds the whole situation of what democracy is, the whole question between the Germans and the other peoples of the earth.
With one gesture across a little white table he settled the fate of a world.
His selfishness, his own personal accumulated experience with an egg, made him see that he wanted salt in it.