These drawbacks may be illustrated under three heads. They are unfit completely to transfigure egoism, for they have all an egoistic aspect, and are indeed merely extended forms of selfishness. They are primarily the products of nature, instinct, passion; and may exist without being raised to the rank of rational principles and without having their just scope delimited and defined. And, lastly, for that reason their relative importance may be mistaken, and one that is the stronger natural impulse may usurp the place of one that is of more binding moral authority.
It has often been pointed out, and sometimes as a matter of complaint, that family affection is very restricted in its range and may conflict with the larger interests of mankind. It produces an intense unity within the one household, but it is apt to be jealous, repellent, aggressive as regards other households and their members. Further, in so far as it is my parents, my brothers, my children, whose welfare I promote, the ground of preference has nothing to do with impartial equity: it is determined by the nearness of the persons to me, by my fondness for them, by my looking on them as appurtenances of mine; in short it is selfish. And those who maintain the sacredness of the family give this no absolute denial, but reply, first, that in the long run the true interests of one family, rightly understood, do not conflict with the true interests of other families, of the state, or the rest of mankind; and, second, that even before the true interests are rightly grasped, the family relation forms at least a stage in the process by which the individual learns to enlarge his self-interest, a preliminary stage but an inevitable stage, and still for the vast majority of men the stage of most practical importance. Many a one is ready to give up his personal pleasure or advantage for those of his own house, who would be deaf to all more general appeals. Thus the family so widens self-love as to include in it some other people, but in one of its aspects it nevertheless depends on self-love.
And the same thing holds good of the enlarged kindred that we call an aristocracy. The nobility of blood forms a sort of family on a large scale, a family of caste, an amplified household united by common pursuits, privileges, education and ideals, and often further blended by frequent intermarriage. The aristocrat finds himself born into this artificial, which is in some respects almost like a natural fraternity; and his ethos to his order, ethos though it be, is largely the ethos of the individual who recognises his own reflection in his fellow nobles.
Nor is it otherwise with the state, especially, we may say, the antique city state, where often the aristocracy really was the native nucleus, and which in the greatest expansion of which it was capable, did not exceed the dimensions of a modern municipality. The patriotism of the citizens had the fervour of domestic piety, their disputes had the bitterness of family quarrels. In the community its sons exulted and lived and moved and had their being: it was theirs and they were its, in opposition to the alien states, the states of other people, to which they were apt to be indifferent or hostile.
Now it is evident that all these principles in the case of a man with a strong consciousness of his own worth and superlative self-respect, might give substance and validity to his egoism, but would rather encourage than counteract it. And so with Coriolanus. His independent, individual, isolated sufficiency passes all bounds. He derives sustenance for it from the three layers of atmosphere that envelope him, but he thinks he can if necessary dispense with these external aids. In so far as he can separate the people in his mind from the whole body politic of Rome, he excludes them from his sympathy, or even his tolerance, and glories in his ostentation of antagonism. Take his speech about the popular demonstration:
They said they were an-hungry, sigh’d forth proverbs,
That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,
That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only: with these shreds
They vented their complainings.