It is impossible to overcome selfishness directly.—As long as our poor, private interests are the only objects vividly present to our imagination and feeling, we must be selfish. The only remedy is the indirect one of entering into fellowship with others, interesting ourselves in what interests them, sharing their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears. When we have done that, then there is something besides our petty and narrow personal interests before our minds and thoughts; and so we are in a way to get something besides mean and selfish actions from our wills and hands. We act out what is in us. If there is nothing but ourselves present to our thoughts, we shall be selfish of necessity; and without even knowing that we are selfish. If our thoughts and feelings are full of the welfare and interests of others we shall do loving and unselfish deeds, without ever stopping to think that they are loving and unselfish. Hence the precept, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." A heart and mind full of sympathy and fellow-feeling is the secret of a loving life; and an idle mind and an empty heart, to which no thrill of sympathy with others is ever admitted, is the barren and desolate region from which loveless looks and cruel words and selfish deeds come forth.
Love is not a virtue which we can cultivate in ourselves by direct effort of will, and then take credit for afterward.—Love comes to us of itself; it springs up spontaneously within our breasts. We can prepare our hearts for its entrance; we can welcome and cherish it when it comes. We cannot boast of it, for we could not help it. Love is the welling up within us of our true social nature; which nothing but our indifference and lack of sympathy could have kept so long repressed. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own." Love "seeketh not its own" because it has no own to seek.
Selfishness on the contrary knows all about itself; has a good opinion of itself; never gets its own interests mixed up with those of anybody else; can always give a perfectly satisfactory account of itself.
Hence when we know exactly how we came to do a thing, and appreciate keenly how good it was of us to do it; and think how very much obliged the other person ought to be to us for doing it, we may be pretty sure that it was not love, but some more or less subtle form of selfishness that prompted it. Love and selfishness may do precisely the same things. Under the influence of either love or selfishness I may "bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned," but love alone profiteth; while all the subtle forms of selfishness and self-seeking are "sounding brass and clanging cymbal." Selfishness, even when it does a service, has its eye on its own merit, or the reward it is to gain. In so doing it forfeits merit and reward both. Selfishness never succeeds in getting outside of itself. From all the joys and graces of the social life it remains in perpetual banishment. Love loses itself in the object loved, and so finds a larger and better self. Selfishness tries to use the object of its so-called love as a means to its own gratification, and so remains to the end in loveless isolation. Many manifestations of selfishness look very much like love. To know the real difference is the most fundamental moral insight. On it depend the issues of life and death.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The most flagrant mockery of love is sentimentality.—The sentimentalist is on hand wherever there is a chance either to mourn or to rejoice. He is never so happy as when he is pouring forth a gush of feeling; and it matters little whether it be laughter or tears, sorrow or joy, to which he is permitted to give vent. On the surface he seems to be overflowing with the milk of human kindness. He strikes us at first sight as the very incarnation of tenderness and love.
And yet we soon discover that he cares nothing for us, or for our joys and sorrows in themselves. Anybody else, or any other occasion, would serve his purpose as well, and call forth an equal copiousness of sympathy and tears. Indeed a first rate novel, with its suffering heroine, or a good play with its pathetic scenes, would answer his purpose quite as well as any living person or actual situation. What he cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement and the ravishing sensation which accompanies all deep and tender feeling. Not love, but love's delights; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sympathetic mood; not helpfulness, but the sense of self-importance which comes from being around when great trials are to be met and fateful decisions are to be made; not devotion to others, but the complacency with self which intimate connection with others gives: these are the objects at which the sentimentalist really aims.
The sentimentalist makes himself a nuisance to others and soon becomes disgusted with himself.—He cannot be relied upon for any serious service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a transient and fluctuating thing; it gives out just as soon as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacrifice. And this attempt to live forever on the topmost wave of emotional excitement defeats itself by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves us to be on our guard against this insidious sham which cloaks selfishness in protestations of affection; pays compliments to show off its own ability to say pretty things; and undertakes responsibilities to make the impression of being of some consequence in the world. The man or woman is extremely fortunate who has never fallen a victim to this hollow mockery of love, either in self or others. The worst effect of sentimentality is that when we have detected it a few times, either in ourselves or in others, we are tempted to conclude that fellowship itself is a farce, love a delusion, and all sympathy and tenderness a weakness and a sham. Every good thing has its counterfeit. By all means let this counterfeit be driven from circulation as fast as possible. But let us not lose faith in human fellowship and human love because this base imitation is so hollow and disgusting:
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all.
THE PENALTY.