III A Defence of the Ethical Principle
III
A DEFENCE OF THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE
Before we proceed further in the direction indicated, we must see whether our own convictions are capable of overcoming the opposition and impediments to morality, presented by widespread currents of contemporary thought. Were we unable to overcome them, then all further advance would be stamped by inner uncertainty.
The first objection was, that all human action must tend to the preservation and advancement of the performer, so that action apart from self-interest, as required by morality, is impossible. We are told that man cannot be inspired and moved to action by any aim outside his own personality, and that even where this appears to be the case, closer examination reveals some hidden motive of self-interest. This was the doctrine of Spinoza and is now a widespread conviction. There is undoubtedly some truth in the fundamental idea, but it is by no means certain that this truth is rightly applied. It is true that all endeavour must start from the life and being of a man and reflect back on him. Something absolutely alien would necessarily leave us cold and indifferent; by his action man must in some way grow and gain and assert his own inner self.
But we must ask ourselves whether the natural Ego, to which the opponent of morality binds all human action, represents the whole of man's life, and whether all endeavour is obliged to serve the interests of natural self-preservation. If a man recognises any kind of spiritual activity in its specific working, he will reject such limitation; and the more he sees in the spiritual life a new and independent phase of reality, the more decisively will he declare that a real self is not contained in the natural Ego, but must first be acquired by means of the spiritual life. In spite of all the subjective force and passion displayed in the self-preservation of the natural Ego, this Ego and its life are without inner significance: it plans and acts, without being absorbed and illuminated by an inner force; it remains alien and dense.