The ego book; a book of selfish ideals

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The Ego Book

A Book of
Selfish Ideals

By
Vance Thompson

New York

E. P. Dutton & Company

681 Fifth Avenue

Copyrijrht 1914
By E. p. DUTTON & COMPANY

DR. WILLIAM J. O'SULLIVAN

Will you permit me to inscribe your name in
this little book of Good Intentions, as a slight
record of my profound admiration for the
scientist and scholar and my sincere affection
for the friend ?

Vance Thompson.

Contents

CHAPTER PACE

I. — When the Ego Wakes . i

II. — How TO Protect Your-
self IN THE Family . 29

III. — How TO Get the Better
OF Your Friends and

Enemies ... 58

IV. — How the Lover can Pro-
tect Himself . . 89

V. — How to Get What You
Want ; also How to
Prevent Others from
Taking It away from
You . . . .119

VI. — The Hive and the Bee . 144

VII. — How TO BE Good to Your-
self when Dead . 164

The Ego Book

Chapter I

When The Ego Wafccs

I

I WAS waiting for a train in a
railway station. Huddled on
a bench was a black-skirted
old woman in cap and apron;
she sat there babbling and smil-
ing at something that lay on
her lap. I drew near and looked
at it. Evidently it belonged to

0 THE EGO BOOK

the human species. It was, in-
deed, a new bom man, almost
bald and toothless.

"Hail, brother," I said, "and
how do you like it as far as you've
got?"

He blinked up at me with pale,
startled eyes; then he glanced at
the old woman ; and finally he fixed
his eyes thoughtfully on his pudgy
right hand. Now at that very
moment — with instantaneous co-
incidence— two splendid and for-
midable things happened. The
first was this:

The new-bom man heard a voice
which was not my voice nor that
of the babbling crone in whose
lap he lay; it was another voice,

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 3

a voice of exile, a voice from ex-
tremely far-off, faint and extenu-
ate, but, as he listened, it seemed
to verberate in him like bells; and
the voice said to him:

"The First Person is the One
Who Speaks,

"The Second Person is the One
Spoken to,

"The Third Person is the One
Spoken of;

"I am — thou art — she is,"
' The new-born man had dis-
covered his ego; it had dawned
upon him that he was himself —
ipsissimus; and in the blinding
glory of this discovery he lifted
up his voice and screamed aloud.

That was the first thing that

4 THE EGO BOOK

happened; the second — quite as
splendid and nearly as formidable
— was that I determined to write
this book. (There was the first
chapter ready to my hand. Tooth-
less and almost bald, but fierce-
eyed and indomitable, it lay there
and roared: "I am here — take
notice!")

The porters and casual passen-
gers saw in that bundle of lace and
pink flesh merely a squalling brat,
for (as in the poem) "still the brat
squalled on"; but I knew better;
I knew that in him were the two
mightiest potentialities on earth:
a new-born ego and a book.

In him there was an ego awake.
The man inside that wingless lump

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 5

of flesh had begun signalling to the
outer world. He had differen-
tiated his individuality from the
fluctuant group-soul of humanity.
He was — at that splendid moment
— victoriously himself. For a long
time I stood there looking (with
approval) upon that significant
performance; but at last I began
to think he was overdoing it.

I said: "Brother, aren't you
exaggerating your importance?"

"Not to myself," his answer
seemed to be.

I sat down beside him and we
stared at each other in manly
silence; a minute passed.

Now the beauty of talking to
a new-bom man is that you can

6 THE EGO BOOK

say everything to him — every-
thing.

A minute passed.

"Brother," said I, "the question
of your importance is debatable.
Let us debate it. A minute has
passed — and in that minute one
hundred human beings Hke you
(toothless and almost bald) were
born and in that minute one hun-
dred human beings (tending to
toothlessness and baldness) died.
The calculation is not my own.
It was made long ago. It has the
air of being exact. If for one hour
you lie squalling on that lank
aproned lap, exactly six thousand
corpses will fall to right and left
of you; and exactly six thousand

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 7

new fierce voices will take up
the wail of humanity. Aren't you
laying undue stress upon your own
importance? Indeed there is more
to it than I have told you, for
overhead whirl the infinite millions
waiting to be bom, while along the
earth-road stumbles the countless
multitude that has not yet earned
the right to die."

A minute passed.

And I said: "To the mathema-
tical mind, brother, you are only
the hundredth part of a minute."

This seemed to sadden him; he
wrinkled up his face and ejected a
milky substance from his mouth;
then he looked at me in a con-
versational way and I gathered

8 THE EGO BOOK

that his thoughts were something
like this: "That man in the yellow
necktie is interested in me; it is
quite natural; and I daresay he
would like to know where I came
from."

"Indeed there has been some
debate on that subject," I ad-
mitted; "suppose you clear up the
mystery. You may be merely a
'human form of the universal
rhythm,' as the quaint scientists
aver. You may be, as a quainter
scientist insists, merely a 'tem-
porarily stable form of intra-
atomic energy.' Or, you may be
something else — what?"

The new-bom man threw him-
self back and howled with derision.

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 9

The aged woman tried to hush
him. She said, "shh — shh!" and
slapped his stomach; but my ad-
vice was: "Roar, brother, and
affirm your ego" — and he did.
He roared and affirmed himself.

That is the way man's life in
the world begins.

II

There is nothing so absolutely
fearless as the new-bom man. He
is sheathed in flabby flesh. The
light stabs his eyes. His unfa-
miliar intestines do not stretch
properly. His nerves and muscles
are not rightly coordinated. There
is a crack in the top of his unfin-
ished skull. The kind of food he

lo THE EGO BOOK

gets would sicken any man. And
his pulpy body is so small it may
be picked up and tossed about like
a ball of cotton. Quite true; but
inside the small, pulpy body there
is a valiant and vehement man
who does not know what fear is.
As I have said, he knows he is
himself — ipsissimus. Why should
he not be bold? Frank and fear-
less he comes into the world,
screaming "I am I," and looks
round him for his welcome.

Now it is a melancholy but
indubitable fact, that in a few
years — ^by the time he is short-
coated or anyway by the time he
is breeched — all this fine, open
courage is driven into conceal-

WHEN THE EGO WAKES ii

ment. When the first danger-
signal is set it runs for cover. I
do not say this is wholly the fault
of parents and guardians; in a
measure I lay it to our defective
organisation of society, to the very
structtire of social life, which
places the child in an environment
of grown-up thought and grown-up
action — thought and action dis-
torted by the harsh and artificial
conditions of life; and this works
the same whether the new-bom
man begins his earth-adventure in
a mansion or an orphan-asylum.

It is a terrifying truth that nine-
tenths of human felicity depends
upon being well bom.

By this statement I do not mean

12 THE EGO BOOK

felicity depends upon having been
dandled upon the knees of a
duchess. (Or even upon the knees
of a viscountess.) One is well
bom when he emerges into an
environment where he is per-
mitted to be himself and where
he may, triimiphantly, affirm his
individuality. Now this does not
happen to one new-bom man in
ten. And that is the reason why,
so often, childhood is a dark and
tragic thing. Unafraid, forth-com-
ing, and accessible, the young
ego confronts the old world which
is to him so new. And the world
— amiably or ill-naturedly — pokes
at his curves and snubs off his
angles and tries to shape him all

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 13

over again. This is not educa-
tion, mark you; and it has nothing
to do with education; it is merely
the working of that intolerant
desire which is in every one of us
to make things over after our own
image. No father can possibly
conceive that his son wouldn't be
the better for fitting into the
pattern he has cut for him.

In a moment of profound
thought Plato discovered that only
one thing had been distributed to
the entire satisfaction of each and
of every man; and that was intel-
lect. Every man is perfectly satis-
fied with his brains. He may regret
that he is not six feet tall — that his
hair is red — that he walks on a

14 THE EGO BOOK

club-foot; he may be of the opin-
ion that wealth, power, rank,
opportunity have been dealt out
with dolesome inequality; but
never — for an instant — is he dis-
satisfied with the intellect bestowed
upon him. Satisfied with it? He
is so proud of it he wants to set
it up as a standard for all the little
new-bom men who fall into his
hands. There are no exceptions.
None of us can get away from it.
(Even I, an essentially modest
man, am writing these pages to
convince you that if you really
want to be good to yourself you
should follow my way of think-
ing.)

That is what the new -bom man

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 15

has to face when he takes his ego
out for an airing down the promen-
ade of life. No one is content to
let him be himself. Perhaps a
firm parent (Jerreus est, eheul)
jams the young ego into his own
iron matrix; perhaps an utter
stranger bends it into his own,
peculiar ideal of curvilinear beauty.
In any case the new-breeched
ego limps home, a bruised and
battered thing. Do you wonder
that a little of its courage — once
so confident and careless — is gone?
When the new-born man has got
his ego home again, what he does
— instinctively — is to set about
protecting it. If he is a fairly
good boy — as you were, I presimie,

i6 THE EGO BOOK

or you would not have grown up
to read good books — if he is a
good boy, I say, he builds round
himself a wall of reticence. He
digs holes, deep holes and tortuous
burrows, into which his ego can
pop at the first sign of danger. No
longer frank; his boldness beaten
down; experience has taught him
the pitiable necessity of running for
cover. It is a sad thing; and it
makes for thought. There is
something wrong when almost
every breeched boy has to lead a
double life — when reticence (if it
be no more than reticence) is the
law of self-preservation.
HI
Oftener than not a boy's lie is

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 17

merely a poor mean hurried de-
fence thrown up to protect his
menaced ego. (So the mollusc
builds a shell round its soft body.)
It is a natural process. (So the
cephalopodian cuttle-fish darkens
the water with sepia dye and hides
from danger in the darkness.)
It is a way that nature has.

And the boy's lie is not only
natural; it is almost instinctive.
It is — to his immature judgment
— the readiest way of defending his
individuality. The question is
not one of morals; at this point it
hardly enters the realm of ethical
discussion. In the beginning it is
an instinctive need of self-protec-
tion that makes the new-born man

i8 THE EGO BOOK

shell himself over with a calcareous
covering of deception, reticence,
falsehood ; and safe inside the shell
his ego grows and fattens like an
oyster.

I do not say this is a good thing;
I say distinctly it is a bad and
calamitous thing; but it is not the
fault of the oyster — or the new-born
man. The oyster, one might
fancy, would prefer to swim his
wet world joyously naked in an
opalescent skin; and the new-bom
man had rather keep his first,
frank, forthcoming, unhesitating
courage ; but if the oyster is to live,
it must have the protection of a
shell, and the young ego — if it is to
survive — ^must have a fortress.

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 19

There are, to be sure, instances
where a new-bom man has come
into an environment so sym-
pathetic that he has no need for
burrow or tower. I think these
instances are rarer than is usually
thought. The new-bom man may
find love, devotion, adoration, but
find, none the less, that his indi-
viduality— the one thing which
permits him to say "I am" — is
attacked at every point.

Have sympathy for your broth-
er, the oyster! And sympathy
for the soft-shelled ego that has
come into your house !

It is possible that you are a
professor of homiletics; that to-day
you walk the moral law with

20 THE EGO BOOK

undeviating precision as a circus-
maiden wa'ks the tight-rope; but
if you will look back into your
boyhood you will find it full of
burrows and fortresses and dark,
hollow places, where you and the
Lie crouched together in hiding.

What else could you do? Think
it over. And what other thing
can the new-breeched man in
your nursery do? (Granted, of
coiu"se, that his ego is menaced.)
The boy is right to build a fortress
even if (unhappily) he has to build
it out of deceits and sham and
falsehood.

And now of two things one will
happen: Either — when he is
strong enough, when his ego has

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 21

affirmed itself — he will walk out
and leave the walls behind; or,
tragically, he will find that he
can't get out. The first is the
normal boy; he is the kind of a
boy that you were and that your
father was and that your son will
be; but for the moment my interest
is with that other wretched boy
whose tower has become a prison.
What he forgot was that the most
important architectural featvire of
every stronghold is — the draw-
bridge. He has left only a barred
window to peer out through; a
window through which the casual
passer-by may throw stones and
flints at his pallid and dirty face.
He is the eternal victim of nature

22 THE EGO BOOK

and of life, exile from happiness,
the world's grim example of neces-
sary reprisal.

One way or the other; of these
two ways one; yet even that
prisoner of the lie I shall not
wholly blame — it was his melan-
choly destiny not to be well bom.

IV

There is nothing so tragic, I
think, as this first adventure in
life of the young ego striving to
find itself and attempting to
establish itself on fair terms in an
alien and unfamiliar environment.

Do you know that children have
committed suicide?

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 23

Not hundreds but thousands
of them.

And for what seemed tiny
causes, ridiculous, ephemeral, mak-
ing for laughter.

Always behind the childish rea-
sons is one implacable and com-
pelling reason, and what it is you
know. The new-bom ego, sensi-
tive as an uncovered nerve, had
been pawed and bruised and
dirtied until (with horror) it fled
away to a very certain refuge. I
know a distinguished German
scholar who, when he was ten
years of age, tried to kill himself
with a pistol-shot.

"Why, in reason's name, did
you try to do it?" I asked.

24 THE EGO BOOK

"Terror," he replied, "the man
inside was trying to nin away from
life."

It was not that love was lack-
ing; he was bom into the very
warmth and shelter and lighted
room of love; what was lacking
was understanding and (put it
bluntly) due respect for an ego
which was essentially his own and
was not the ego of any other per-
son, even though that person were
the first-of-kin.

These thoughts, and others,
came to me as I stood in the
railway station looking at the
toothless and almost bald man
who lay, wrapped in lace and
flannel, in an old woman's lap.

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 25

When my train was called, I let
it go away to the mountains
without me.

"Brother," I said, "that new-
bom ego of yours has a long
pedigree. The quaint scientist
will trace it back, in its evolution,
to the pale protozoads who ex-
changed their paranucleary sub-
stance in the first vague, groping
kiss. (At which moment, brother,
love was bom — and death.) It is
a long evolution. Down through
the years you journeyed acquiring,
attaining, perfecting the machine
which is your ego. And, brother,
you have a right to affirm and
maintain it. You are living out a
life the curves of which were

26 THE EGO BCX)K

plotted far back in the dim night
of evolution. Millions of years
went to your making. Go your
way; for if you are to survive you
must go your own way — and the
way of none other. "

At this picture of an eternal past
and a menacing future, the new-
bom man howled aloud. I
watched him, without disapproval.
In a little while he became strangely
red in the face and breathless.
Then silence. Suddenly a look
of curious intentness came over his
face, as though he were listening to
a ventriloquistic voice. He had
heard the voice of hunger. He
gave a fierce yell, which even the
aged and wrinkled woman under-

WHEN THE EGO WAKES 27

stood; what it said was: "I am
I— feed me!"

It was a plain and precise
statement.

"Feed me" — but there was no
food, of the kind he Hked, to be
had; the old, old nurse did not
have any (and I did not have
any).

From a black silk bag she took
out a hollow ivory ball filled with
pebbles or shot, and attached to a
short ivory handle ; and she rattled
it in his face.

It was a moment before he
realized the full infamy of the
proceedings — that he who had
demanded a special kind of food
should be mocked by the rattling

28 THE EGO BOOK

of an ivory ball with pebbles in it !
His wrath roared aloud.

"Howl on, O new-bom man," I
said, "she is not the only woman
who will deceive you!"

And I went away.

Qiapter 11

How to Protect Yourself in the Family

I

YOU were bom, I happen to
know, in a family. There
are few exceptions. It is
one of those universal and inex-
tricable situations for which the
popiilar imagination has found an
apt expression:

De quelque cote que je me tourne Je
vols la ville de Lihourne.

And the family — it is your town

of Libourne; and mine. You are
29

30 THE EGO BOOK

bom in it and, turn as you will,
it confronts you. The most tre-
mendous moment in life is
when the ego wakes and looks
about and sees tall people standing
round it, as trees stand round the
house. Who are these people?
Why are they here? And how
came he, the new-fledged ego,
among them? I believe that every
boy has lived in this mystery and
asked himself these questions.
There is a tall man there whom
he does not know, whom, indeed,
he can with difficulty know until he
is himself a man. There is a tall
woman there who stoops to him
and captures by cajolery his earli-
est attention. Amazing things he

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 31

thinks of her, for she is the first
idol as she is the last.

You do not expect me to attack
this idol. Toucher a la mere, y
pense-tu? — that is a sacrilege un-
committed in the ages; and wo
unto him by whom it shall come;
but it is well to see these tall people
of the household as the young and
bewildered stranger in the house
sees them. The father's attack
upon his individuality is due to
that dreadful intellectual vanity
which would fain see his son's
mind bent as his own is bent. It
is natural, as has been said, for few
men can conceive of an intellect
better than their own. And it
is nattiral that the attorney should

32 THE EGO BOOK

see in his son an immature but
promising attorney — as the wolf
sees a wolf in his cub. Happily
for the boy it is only at odd times
that the father makes an attack
upon his nascent individuality —
only now and then when the more
immediate cares of the day are put
away. But the mother is unfail-
ing and unresting in the attack.
By bribes and by threats, by kisses
and laughter and abysmal self-
sacrifice she captures him. She
storms the stronghold of his being
as Cossacks storm a town. Even
his love — his beautiful instinctive
filial love — is not free love; it is
chained in caresses and tied up in
menaces and bribed with comfits.

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 33

And to gain liberty to be himself
(often) the son must be a bad son.
Until he knows — that is, until he
learns how to protect himself in
the family into which he has
fallen.

There were (I remember) other
strangers in your family. One
of them was a girl with a lot of
brown hair on her head and eyes
the color of a bee. She was
young for a girl and slim. One
of your earliest and most awfiil
memories is of being danced on her
sharp knees. She was one of
your most fearsome enemies. No
one, it seemed, could invent more
ways of showing disrespect for
your ego. Her kisses were given

34 THE EGO BOOK

in a way that made them a daily
and public humiliation. You had
rather been the pet of a python.
The boy you found in the house
when you got there was more
easily tolerated. He was only a
few years older than you were
and the warfare was waged on
more equal terms. You seemed to
have an instinctive knowledge of
his plan of attack. And one day
— that was the beginning of strange
things — you were able to foretell
exactly how he was planning to
make a breach in your wall of
defense. It was as though your
thought had jumped with his;
it was more — it was as though you
were inside his skin, sitting there

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 35

with him like a twin, and hear-
ing him think. It was the most
amazing thing! For the adven-
ture went far; you discovered that
he was not merely a red-headed,
tweed-breeched ruffian of an
enemy named Rufus; you dis-
covered, as well, that inside him
was an ego — not exactly like
yours, not as interesting as yours,
but, at all events, a distinct and
recognizable ego.

You gasped ; and the shock of it
— or Rufus — knocked you off the
garden wall.

II

That was a memorable day. It
was a greater day than that upon

36 THE EGO BOOK

which the ego woke and said:
"I am I — feed me!" It was the
day of all days. It was the day
the ego first recognized it was not
walking the world alone. If I re-
member rightly, you thrilled with
a finer joy than any joy that man
may know — save one. (Of that
joy there shall be word hereafter.)

For a while you lay on the
lawn where you had fallen from
the wall. The breath had been
bumped out of you, but when it
came back you made use of it to
shout: "HilRufus!"

Rufus had gone.

You lay on your back and stared
up at the tree-tops. They were
whispering in the wind, but they

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 37

said nothing to you. Nature
never says anything to a child. To
read its message one must look at
it with eyes already old. But you
lay there and stared at the tree-
tops while swift waves of exulta-
tion coursed through you from
heel to hair.

* * Philemon , Philemon ! " you
said to yourself — you were named
Philemon after a tall person with a
cleft chin and a long purse, who
had come into your family dis-
guised as an uncle, "Philemon —
it was all a mistake — you are not
alone in a world of moving, mouth-
ing, eating, kissing shadows — hid
in these strange enemies are other
egos, ctiriously like yo\ir own."

38 THE EGO BOOK

And you stood up and walked
abroad; young, strong, audacious,
you walked the earth, haughtily —
as though you had secret and
formidable allies ever3rwhere. And
indeed you had.

You were no such temerarious
fool as to put your Discovery to
the test without due preparation.
You were a cautious Philemon.
For days you went round Rufus,
looking for an opening — soft-foot-
ed as a wolf goes round a sheep-
fold. That ruffian had every gate
locked. And then one day (it
was in a rather dangerous and
mysterious place at the foot of the
lawn near a menacing hedge) you
found the slim girl — all hair and

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 39

teeth and eyes and beauty, like
a cat — curled up in the shade,
reading or pretending to read
(for you were never quite sure of
her) in a book. Her name was
Kathryn and she had the part of
sister in the family you came into.
Practically you knew nothing of
her, except that she was a hard
and dangerous enemy — the one
vulnerable point you had found was
to call her "Kat, " which seemed
to draw blood.

You sat down three feet away
from her and looked at her. What
she would do you did not know —
the distance of three feet meant
some sort of safety; but you
hoped, with a strangely eager

40 THE EGO BOOK

hope, that her ego would slip out of
her and come and have a talk with
you.

"Kathryn, " you said; that
meant you were on a peaceful
mission; it was unusual and at-
tracted her attention; she glanced
up wonderingly from her book
and put the hair out of her eyes.

"Well?" she asked.

You wanted to tell her about
your Discovery.

"Kathryn, I've found out some-
thing," you said; "Rufus isn't
just a boy."

"I know he isn't," Kathryn
calmly replied; "he's a little red-
headed beast."

You were grieved; you felt

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 41

sorry for Kathryn; she seemed
pathetically young — that was the
way you used to talk before you
made the Discovery. You looked
at her sadly ; and you saw that she
was watching you with eyes the
color of a bee — indeed the color
of two bees.

"What's the matter, Phil?"
Phil was a peace-word ; her way
of insulting you was to call you
Filly.

And you told her of your Dis-
covery. It was hard to tell. At
first she seemed to think there was
a Mad Boy in the family. But
after a while, when you told her
how you and Ruf us were sitting on
the wall and (while you were fore-

42 THE EGO BOOK

casting trouble) you had somehow
or other peeped inside Rufus and
discovered — to your amazement!
— that there was another fellow
inside Rufus very much like your-
self; it had made you feel "aw'fiy "
good; and you wondered whether
there was anyone inside her — and
wotdd she tell you.

Very quiet there in the mysteri-
ous shadow of the hedge, you
remember; and Kathryn looking
at you with eyes that were mysteri-
ous too, but bright; and she said:
*'Why, Phil, you are grown up.'*

Out of a sagacity, old as the life
of the planet, you answered: "I
always was."

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 43
III

*Twas a shy queer game you
played with Kathryn. Hers was
not so accessible, so courteous, and
forthcoming an ego as your own.
It would dart out like a sun-lizard,
show you its shifting, flashing
colors for a moment and then
dart back again. You'd stare with
astonishment and find there was
nothing but Kat there. Of course
that was not so bad now, for you
could put up with a good deal of
Kat, knowing all the while there
was a secret and shining ally inside.

Rufus was a harder fortress to
take. That extraordinary boy
seemed to have been bom without

44 THE EGO BOOK

a drawbridge. And he was a
remarkable strategist. He seemed
to know in some Napoleonic way
just where you and Kathrynwere
trying to drive a mine under his
fortifications; and bang — ^he had
you countermined like that ! One
day you got him. (That is Ru-
fus's story; it wouldn't be fair
to print it in a book — and he
black-robed and sitting now on a
judicial bench!) But you cer-
tainly got him; you and Kathryn;
and when he did come out you
found that the man inside wasn't
at all like the truculent, red-
headed tyrant who passed in yoxir
family for a brother. He was a com-
panionable fellow and a valuable

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 45

ally. What was oddest was that
he had had remarkable experiences
which had never come in your way
nor in Kathryn's. For one thing
he did not believe in abstract
ideas. He said there was no such
thing as an abstract idea.

And Kathryn asked: "What
about duty?"

"Duty," said Rufus, "isn't one
thing — it is a lot of things. It's
your duty to go to school and to
scrub the back of your neck and to
fold up your clothes at night and
run a thread between your teeth
and say 'Thank you' and 'Please' —
each one is a duty, but there isn't
any such thing as Duty. If there is,
why don't it come round here and

46 THE EGO BOOK

let us have a look at it. Every-
thing can either walk or fly or
swim or lie still like a stone and
you can see it — or sit on it — and
know it is there. "

That was the way the man
inside Rufus used to go on; you
and Kathryn did not agree with
him — especially Kathryn, who
said the Noblest Object of Ador-
ation was an abstract idea — but
you liked to hear him talk. He
knew things you had never known
— or perhaps had forgotten.

It was a splendid thing, this
discovery of allies hidden in the
two young brawling enemies who
were living in your house. And
the best of it was that even Rufus

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 47

admitted there was a man inside
him and began to take a sort of
pride in letting him out now and
then for an airing. Of course he
only did this when the two tall
strangers in your family were not
about.

Looking back upon it now it
seems to you almost miraculous
that you should have ever made
their acquaintance at all. They
stood so high they breathed a
different layer of the atmosphere,
and when they stooped it was as
though tall poplars had leaned
down to say something to the
grass.

The hardest thing on earth is
to know a person who is not of

48 THE EGO BOOK

your own generation. I have a
friend (if you will pardon me for
thrusting myself into this chapter
which belongs to you) who, when
first I knew him, was a boy. At
least the body he walked the world
in was that of a boy. For a year
or so I had not seen him. One day
he came into my study and held
out his hand — you would have
said he was still a boy, but I knew
at once he had jiimped the barrier
that had divided his generation
from mine; to-day our egos eye
each other with perfect confidence.
Now the generation that stands
just above a child is — in some
crushing way — the most difficult
of comprehension. Even the gen-

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 49

eration above it seems more un-
derstandable. A boy will get to
know — for example — his grand-
father and that good man's ego,
long before he comes upon speak-
ing terms with the ego of his own
father. It is curious; and there
must be some law in it, as there is
in everything else; it appears in
the flimsiest fashion of the day as
well as in hviman relations. An
illustration:

There was given recently in a
notorious city — a city without
myth or mystery — an exhibition
of what was called Bad Taste.
What it really was was an exhi-
bition of sinister and profound vul-
garity, for the Bad Taste it jeered

50 THE EGO BOOK

at was that of the generation just
above — of the mother and the
father. And yet I saw in it the
working of that mysterious law to
which I have just drawn your
attention. For — note this — bad
taste is invariably the taste of the
generation immediately preceding
our own. The bad taste of the
time of Shakespeare was Spenser;
that of Pope's day was Shake-
speare; that of Wordsworth's time
was Pope. And to the next gene-
ration all that is beautiful for us
will seem hideous — all that for us
is gracious will seem ridiculous — all
that is rich poor. Our delicious
boudoirs, our charming drawing-
rooms, our ravishing costumes, our

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 51

thrilling dramas, our interesting
books (perhaps even this one!),
our Vart moderne — oh, oh, how
they will be stuffed away into
garrets, pulped into paper, mere
shot rubbish given to the tides.
It is part of that queer law. That
a little later our grandchildren —
jeering at the taste of their fathers
— will take it down from the garret
and worship it again is our only
consolation.

There is no bad taste except
the taste of the generation immedi-
ately preceding our own; grand-
father's clock is all right ; it is only
father's clock that is the scorn and
derision of youth.

A law — Therefore is it that the

52 THE EGO BOOK

egos dwelling in a family as boy
and girl and boy find it hardest
of all to get on terms of intimacy
with the father and mother of the
house.

Since I have already told so
much about your family, you do
not mind — do you? — my telling
a little more. The tall man,
whose r61e was that of father in
your family, had a thin, pale face,
made fine by the habit of thought.
His eyes were gray and he had
(then) short, thick, brown hair
brushed back from his forehead.
He wore gold reading-glasses
which gave him an air of being
foreign and occult. For years
you stalked his ego, lying in wait

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 53

for it at every turn of his thought.
Between you and him was the
opaque glass shield which divides
generation from generation. You
will remember it was Kathryn
who broke the glass, but that is
her own story — ^her own grievous,
tragic story — and you would not
like me to tell it here though the
telling cannot hurt her any more
— forever. Behind the shattered
glass you found a man sitting; and
the man within looked out and saw
you; and you knew each other —
miraculously, in the darkness and
fierce sorrow of that hour, the man
within the father knew the man
within the son.

You have often told, me, in

54 THE EGO BOOK

quiet hours, how the last idol
fell — the first and last idol, which
is the Mother. One cannot love
an idol. One may worship it;
and in worship there is something
of the unknown — one worships
only the aloof and the far-away.
That you loved her seemed to be
the first thing that beat in upon
your awakened consciousness; but
it was a love that went in chains
and fattened on bribes and sacri-
fices and habits. You loved your
idol. You would have thrown
yourself beneath the crushing
wheels it was carried abroad on.
You loved your idol; but it was
unknown and mysterious — stand-
ing up high among the clouds of an

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 55

upper generation. But the gate-
way to that temple — the door
of that ego — ^you opened at last.
All brave and beautiful deeds are
simple. You did it quite simply.
I remember the very words in
which you described it: "I just let
down my drawbridge and stepped
out and stood quite still where she
could see me. She was sitting
by the window in the twilight; I
could see her face — it was like a
cameo against the fading copper
of the sky. She turned and
looked at me — "

And the rest is your story and
your secret ; and hers.

56 THE EGO BOOK

IV

I do not know whether I have
made quite clear your adventures
in the family into which you were
bom, so that others may profit by
them. To me it seems very clear.
You learned how to protect your-
self in your family by making
allies, first of one and then of all.
You made yoiur fortress impreg-
nable by letting down the draw-
bridge and taking the warders
away from the gate. You made
the man inside you invincible by
letting him go forth, naked and
without weapons.

Your secret was a simple one.
Magnificent as your Discovery

TO PROTECT YOURSELF 57

was, it was simple, too — that within
the strangers, who dwelt in your
house, Itirked egos like your own,
shining and forthcoming and cou-
rageous. That was all.

Qiapter m

How to Get the Better of Yoor Friencis
and Enemies

rERE is only one way to
get the better of a man,
and that is to understand
him better than he does you.

It does not matter whether that
man is friend or enemy — indeed
the difference between them is not
antithetical. Both are men who
are interested in you and in whom
you take an interest. I am not
siire that the interest of the enemy

58

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 59

is not more unflagging than that of
the friend. He, in his sound, in-
veterate way, will lie awake nights
thinking about you, while your
best friend falls indifferently
asleep and dreams of some girl
who is touring the continent. An
attraction equal in power — if it be
not the same in quality — keeps
them swinging round and round
in the orbit of your life. That is
why I have put them both into
one chapter — enemies and friends
together.

I would not have you think I
hold friendship lightly.

Spiritual philosophers have al-
ways seen something sacred in it.
There are in the Bible, you may

60 THE EGO BOOK

have observed, many mysterious
statements; none, I think, is more
mysterious than that reference to
a "faithful friend," where he is
called medicamentum vitcB et im-
mortalitatis — as though in friend-
ship there were the very elixir of
life and immortality. Now the
subtlest of modem scientists — I
have named Dr. Baraduc — states
precisely the same thing, though in
modish scientific language, when he
says that friendship between you
and Kathryn — or Rufus — is due
to the harmony of your vibrations,
and that these vibrations may be
measured (with perfect exactitude)
by a biometer.

(You did not know Dr. Bara-

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 6i

due? He was a thaumaturgist.
He used to walk the sceptical
boulevards of Paris in a dusty
black coat and a pot hat and no
one recognized in the dingy scien-
tist the eternal sorcerer. Public
opinion is easily duped by a
change of costume. Because the
constellated robe is gone it fancies
there are no necromancers more.
But Dr. Baraduc, out in his wind-
blown house in Neuilly, worked
miracles, juggling with gamma
rays and alpha rays and negative
electrons, as the Japanese juggler
plays with fans and lamps. And
above all he measured — with that
fragile biometer — the vibrations
of human vitality — whence I

62 THE EGO BOOK

learned what friendship is; and
enmity. It is a simple thing,
the biometer. There is a Ruhm-
korff coil; there is a tiny bronze
needle suspended over a dial
marked out with 360°. Over the
instrument is a glass globe. That
is all. Now place your left hand
near it ; the needle will be attracted
and will swing ten, fifteen, twenty
degrees round the circle, pause
there for a given number of seconds,
and return to its place at a certain
rate of speed. The right hand
will repulse the needle to some
other point and at a varying speed.
These data give the formula of
your animal vibrations; they are
the horizontal forces. Now in a

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 63

similar way the biometrist would
measure the diagonal animic vi-
brations and the swifter mental
vibrations of the vertical forces.
And when he was done he knew —
believe me — ^more about you than
if he had walked through you with
a lighted candle in his hand and a
microscope in his eye. What is
significant is that in five thousand
observations made in hospitals
and clinics of Paris no two gave an
identical formula. But there were
curious likenesses. And when
these Hkenesses exist — when the
vital forces in Rufus vibrate in fair
harmony with yours — there is no
power of circumstance can break
yovir friendship or pry you apart.

64 THE EGO BOOK

And this harmony, if it be sane,
fortifies itself. It acts, as was
mysteriously said, as an elixir of
life. Whence friendship, whence
racial sympathies, and many other
obscure and terrible forces.)
Friend and enemy

While the white cord that binds
my friend to me is strong — far-
reaching back to other stages of
evolution, it may be — no less
binding is the black cord that ties
me fast to my enemy and him to
me. Hate is only love a rehours.
The bronze needle over the dial
swings to right instead of left.

Many things I do not know: I
do not know of what tree man is

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 65

the seed, and I am a trifle sceptical
in regard to the objective universe;
but one thing I know: My friend
and I and my enemy are as insepa-
rable as the three sides of the
prism. And it is a question
whether Omnipotence, laboring
through eternity, could divide us,
one from the other twain.
And this is mysterious.

II

It is one of my Good Intentions
to give a practical method of get-
ting the better of friend and foe,
but if you will permit me to wanton
by the way, I should like to call
back to your memory, my dear
Philemon, a friend of your long ago.

66 THE EGO BOOK

Yours was an unexpected friend-
ship. It certainly had not been
announced by the Sibyls. You
met in the days of youth, but you
headed him by two years. He had
pale hair and blue eyes and a
gentle nature. It may be truth-
fully said that all the good in his
soul he received from your mouth.
(This statement might be illus-
trated by the picture of a night-
hawk feeding its young; for so he
gaped and so you stuffed his
maw.) You lit his dim ego at the
lamp of yours. You carried him
on your shoulder. And as you
grew yourself (the picture now is of
Milo carrying the calf), you lifted
him higher and higher from the

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 67

dust and infinite conmionness of
the street. Always you will stoop
from the weight of him — so long
you carried him on your neck.
Year after year you held him up.
Year after year you tried to waken
his ego so that it might at least
whisper "I am I." And you
failed; you worked, cried, prayed,
sobbed for him for long and pre-
cious years; and you failed. High
as you held him in your arms he
was still a child of Nothing; he
was still a flabby twin of Insig-
nificance— this friend of whom
you had hoped to make a Living,
Loving, Reciprocating Man.

Then, in despair, you laid him
gently down on the rug and held

68 tHE EGO BOOK

the door ajar. Without violence,
without indignation, without anger,
without a vehement gesture, with
exquisite tact and smiling sim-
plicity you said to him: "Scat!"

Cautiously he descended the
stairs, as though he were carrying
something infinitely rare and pre-
cious— perhaps a fragment of the
soul you had given him — and
disappeared in the commonness of
the street.

That was long ago; but read
here:

Now just the other day you were
sailing with a prosperous wind,
for a certain harbor. Your good
ship, Get-Rich-Quick, was laden
to the ivlX with a rich and valu-

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 69

able cargo. Eight bells at sea.
Suddenly the look-out, perched on
the crojack yard, screamed dole-
fully, and, as you rushed forward,
a shot raked the rigging. In a
moment a dark, sinister, low-lying
craft, flying the black flag with
skull and cross-bones, bore down
on you. The first to board the
Get-Rich-Quick was the roaring
captain, a hairy pirate, his face
black with powder and wrath, a
naked cutlass between his teeth.

And who was this stark and
hairy enemy?

You have guessed; he was no
other than the child of Nothing —
the flabby twin of Insignificance.

As a friend he was a heart-break-

70 THE EGO BCX)K

ing failure; but as an enemy he
was gloriously trenchant and de-
structive. You would fain have
had word with him, but he was
too busy slaughtering able sailor-
men, bisecting the cabin-boy, and
looting your precious cargo of
Utrecht velvet, Oriental gems, and
Venetian lace. With exquisite
tact you leaped overboard and
swam for yotu- life. A few mo-
ments later you heard the explo-
sion. Not content with looting
the Get-Rich-Quick the hairy ruf-
fian had blown her up — that ship
of promise! — the deserting rats,
the bosun's dog and all.

What you had to think over was
this: In place of a poor, feckless,

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 71

inefficient friend you had gained a
thoroughly effective enemy. And
now you lie awake nights thinking
of each other; you were never so
nearly one — not even when you
carried him about with you like a
cockchafer in a pill-box. But bid
the stark and hairy one have
patience. There has been a way
discovered of getting the better of
one's enemies — and friends.

Ill

The way is this:

Understand your friend better
than he does you. At first glance
it may seem difficult. You can't
very well lead him into Dr. Bara-
duc's clinic and take the measure

72 THE EGO BOOK

of his vibrations, animal, animic,
and mental, set them down in a
chart, and deduce his formula.
The tamest friend wouldn't stand
for that without tying. Happily
there is another way. John Mur-
dochamey is not your friend save
for the sufficient reason that his
vital forces travel in wave-lengths
measurably akin to your own.
Sandy Mclngarack is your enemy,
not, as you fancy, because he is an
Ulsterman and the devil took an
interest in him from the beginning,
but because his vital currents run
counter to yours.

The good Dr. Baraduc would
tell you there is a psychic vitality
as well as a physical one. Through

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 73

the latter he spied on your physi-
cal health — the cleanliness of the
blood and the play of nerve and
muscle and the decency of your
flesh; but his study of psychic
vitality led him, through a fairly
well-lighted corridor, to the inner
chamber of the house, where your
ego — perfected in the long years
of evolution — sits up and takes
notice.

It is not an impossible thing
for you to enter the house of your
friend. It is not even a difficult
thing. Unless you were swaying
to an almost identical rh3rthm, he
had not been your friend. Unless
you had an almost uncanny per-
ception of his ways of thought,

74 THE EGO BOOK

you had never found yourself in
vibratory sympathy with him.

(One of your friends, you say,
is your exact opposite. It comes
to the same thing. There is as
much unity between a positive
electron and a negative one, as
between two parallel lines.)

You put it as clearly, I think, as
it can be put: The Little Gentle-
man Inside your friend is an ego
appreciably like your own. Like
and yet different. In order to
understand his ego it is not going
to help you much to lean, like
Narcissus, over your own life and
watch its current of joys, hopes,
fears, desires, prides, loves, hates,
distresses. What you have got to

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 75

do is to keep your eye on his ego.
You must try and think in his way.
When you were climbing the Eiger-
hom and checked and said: "Jove!
Murdochamey would enjoy this
sort of thing!" you had already
begun ; you were taking yoiu* pleas-
ure in terms of Murdochamey.
The next time you met him it was
easier to follow that sympathetic
way of thinking. And while that
huge fellow sprawled in your
library chair and talked without
end, you fotmd it quite possible to
foretell the foreward trend of his
thought. It is what anyone can
do with practice; for, while he
lounges there letting his thoughts
go, his ego has let down the draw-

76 THE EGO BOOK

bridge and stepped out, unafraid.
And the thing grows on you. The
practice of putting yourself in
your friend's place — of thinking in
terms of his ego — brings about a
very peculiar kind of sympathy;
the vibrations get into closer ac-
cord; and after a while you can
forecaste, with the exactitude of a
barometer, the subtle and coming
changes of his mood, of which he
himself is not yet conscious. It
can be done. It is done every day
by men who do not know what
they are doing, but who are able
nevertheless to work the seeming
miracle.

It is an old rule, but indefecti-
ble: Put yourself in his place. If

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 77

you can think not only your
own thoughts but Murdochamey's
thoughts, as well, you've got him
on the hip.

And you will cross-buttock him
and break his neck?

By no means; for to understand
Murdochamey is to sympathize
with him — which lets the draw-
bridge down. I have been assum-
ing that you love Murdocharney.
It is not, perhaps, a lawless as-
sumption that you do not love that
wretched man of Ulster, Mclngar-
ack. (It is hard to adore with
equal fervour all the inhabitants
of the planet — especially those of
the North of Ireland.) Whether
you like him or not, he is the third

78 THE EGO BCX)K

side of the prism. Only in one way
can you get the better of him:
You must understand him better
than he does you.

There is one trouble with this
thoroughly practical method of
treating your enemies.

It is wasteful.

I speak from personal experi-
ence; whenever I've applied it
faithfully and well, to a truculent
and satisfactory enemy, I've
spoilt him for all practical pur-
poses of enmity. You can't slip
into the fortress of — well, say an
Ulsterman, and sit down with the
Man Inside, without acquiring a
kind of sympathy with his enor-
mous, destructive ruffianism. The

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 79

stones he throws are smashing
your own windows and he is firing
your hayricks; but you find your-
self first appreciating his skill and
then feeling sorry when he misses.
That is the point where you realize
there is one good enemy spoiled.
You have begun to think in terms
of Mclngarack. In a little while
you are able not only to think as he
thinks, but you can think a min-
ute ahead of him — and then you
can lead him into camp.

It is practical; it is not hard;
but as I have said it is wasteful — •
it is a wanton destruction of
enemies. For you cannot know a
man — know the Man Inside — and
hate him.

8o THE EGO B(X)K

Have you read Feltham? He
says: "I never yet knew any man
so bad, but some have thought
him honest; and afforded him
love. Nor ever any so good, but
some have thought him vile, and
hated him."

It was all a matter of imder-
standing. If a man will but set
himself to it he can come to an
understanding with any man — be
he roisterer, bad husband, politi-
cian or Ulsterman; for every man
has in himself a little of the rois-
terer and bad husband, a little of
the politician and more or less
(God help us!) of the Ulsterman.

Being a nice-minded man, and
honest, you refuse to be on terms

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 8i

of sympathetic understanding with
yoiir enemies? You look with
horror upon the awful possibility
of their becoming your friends?

I sympathize with you; but it is
a plain matter of self -protection;
it is the only way to get the best
of them.

It was not without deep reflec-
tion that I called that splendid and
eternal thing, your ego, the Little
Gentleman Inside. He is indeed a
Gentleman of the most ancient
lineage, going back far beyond the
metazoad kiss to the first vague
vortex of intra-atomic energy and
to a Causa Causans more mysteri-

82 THE EGO BOOK

ous still. This sovereign and per-
fect being is a Gentleman because
he does always (and always with
simplicity) exactly what he ought
to do. He is, I repeat, a Gentle-
man and a Gentleman of infinite
age and an upstanding dignity,
acquired in the countless years.

Here I have something to say,
which applies even to the Ameri-
can civilization in which these
distinguished egos, bom west of
the Atlantic Ocean, are now living.
What I first have in mind is a
thing peculiarly American. This
remark applies to no other nation.
(It is to be omitted from the Ja-
panese edition of this book.)

Thus, then: I have discovered

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 83

the most significant fact concern-
ing American civilization. It is
that when an American is really
fond of anyone he insults him. I
do not merely mean that he calls
him "old hoss" and "bo" and the
like; he has other phrases ("smile
when you say that ! ") for his friend
that would annoy a coal-heaver.
What I do mean is that the Gentle-
man Inside is supposed to gather
from a steady stream of cold
insolence — from studied and or-
nate insults — from slangy jests that
would break a negro prize-fighter's
head — is supposed to gather, I
repeat, that another ego of equal
antiquity and gentility is fond of
him. If that other ego did not

84 THE EGO BOOK

really love you, he would treat you
with perfect propriety and respect.
These slangy insults — this rough
kind of guying — are the homages
he pays a friend; they are his way
of asserting a cheery and intimate
affection. If you ask him why he
heaves insults at his friend, he
answers heartily: "The dear old
swine, why, I love him, dash blank
him" — and he curses him, with
prodigious and unwearying fervor.
You would fancy the Distin-
guished Gentleman Inside would
shudder at this sort of thing; evi-
dently he takes it for what it is —
the mere rough coltishness of an
affection, exuberant but untrained,
which knows not how to express

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 85

itself in grave, sweet words. He
reads it aright. He knows that
this insulting bluster hides a sin-
cere, though shame-faced, love;
but the stranger gasps.

There is one thing more — and
stranger. Like every other ego the
ego of the ordinary man is a Gentle-
man, ancient and wise and grave.
Now when he goes out for an air-
ing and meets friends or enemies
— it doesn't matter which — they
tell him stories. Little anecdotes,
either roguish or vulgar. Go where
he will — into a club, a bar, a tent,
an office — he is confronted by a
man with a vulgar little anecdote.

"Have you heard the one
about "

86 THE EGO BOOK

Ever3rwhere. Always. From
the judge in his robing-room to the
scavenger in the sewer, each has
his story. And the stories are
generally of two kinds ; they have
to do with women or with shrewd
bits of roguery.

Children love little tales — ^little
dramatizations of life ; and there is
something childlike in the grown-
up's delight in tawdry bar-room
fables. In those I have heard
there is almost always something
cruel. If the laughter is not aimed
at the splendor and honor of
woman, it is pointed at someone
who has been cheated (half the
stories are based on business chi-
canery), injured, outraged, made

GET THE BETTER OF ONE 87

a victim of cleverness or a butt
of cruel strength. Stories of the
vulgar side of love; stories of comic
pillage; epigrams of grossness and
crime.

What intellectual pabulum is
this to set before a Gentleman of
long descent — he who is of a very-
ancient and honorable house —
the Gentleman Inside?

It seems to me that when one
has got the better of his friends
(and foes) a very pretty reforma-
tion would be to treat them with
fair courtesy in the first place and
— in the second — to pay them the
compliment of assuming that they
have outgrown the stage of little
foolish boys who squat, bartering

88 THE EGO BOOK

childish absurdities, in the stable
mews.

O, my anecdotal brother, respect
the Gentleman Indoors!

Chapter IV
How the Lover Can Protect Himself
I

IT was not last year or the year
before ; but you may remember
the evening. A sHm and ardent
young man, you flamed to and fro
in the twilight of my study, talk-
ing of love. I did not look upon
you as a pathological case ; I look-
ed upon you as a problem; and
with wholesome curiosity I asked:
**How does it feel, Philemon, to be
in love? " And you answered that
89

90 THE EGO BCM3K

to you it seemed as though you
were occupying the centre of an
emanation, which thrilled and bil-
lowed on every side of you; and
you said: "It is love."

"Your diagnosis is doubtless
correct," I told you, "and you are
indeed in love. But all is well.
The danger is negligible. For there
is a difference (it is vast and wide
and profoimd) between being in
love — and loving The Woman.
You, as you have so well described
it, are the centre of radiant and
forthgoing emanations. You have
defined precisely the state of being
in love.

"But, Philemon," I went on,
**it is not the same thing (for it

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 91

is exactly the opposite thing) to
love The Woman. Then, Phile-
mon, the thousand and one fierce
and exultant consciousnesses which
make up your ego will march all
together, like a crowd to a festival,
like an army to the frontier; and
they will march toward Her and
toward Her alone. That is what
it is to love The Woman — She who
is ipsissima — She whose tense in-
dividuality of vibration is for you
so compelling that there is no
other point of attraction in all the
universe. That way danger lies.
But at present, I take it, you are
safe. You are merely in love. "

Do you remember that evening?
And the verses you read me? I

92 THE EGO BOOK

have forgotten the verses, but I
remember the advice I gave you.

I continued: "Being in love,
Philemon, never hurt anyone. It
even gives one a kind of exaltation,
which young men — ^who are not
so highly developed as you are —
often mistake for genius; whence
the rhymes of youth. (Nightin-
gales in love are canorous; with
equal obstinacy but with less dis-
criminative judgment, the cat in
love believes he has a singing
voice.) "

You received that remark with-
out the approbation of a smile;
and I went on: "Being in love
never hurt anyone. In fact so
long as you stand, self-centred at

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 93

the very heart of the radiance, you
are protecting your ego in a mas-
terly way. No dangerous entity,
silk-garmented, long of hair and
hard of purpose, can force the
approaches to your citadel. Those
rays of yours are all pointed out-
ward— like shining spears, tipped
with death. Being in love, O son
of the Quirites, is an admirable
protection for the ego. It is an
armour for the individual. But
if ever you love The Woman —

Her "

And there, I remember, I
stopped; you had not heard me;
you were not listening; the man
in love never does listen to any-
one but himself. You were sing-

94 THE EGO BOOK

ing the lover's litany of I — me —
my. He who loves The Woman
is a different kind of lover. He will
listen to eternity, if your talk be
of love, or if it so much as touch
the hem of Her divinity.

(I like that kind of a lover — the
one-pointed lover; for after the
pleasure of living a love-story
there is none greater than that of
talking about one.)

Being in love, then, is a state in
which there is no peril at all. It
fortifies the ego and affirms it.
Blithely the Little Gentleman In-
side sits in the centre of his radiant
emanations (as you called them)
and twangs a guitar and sings
songs to himself. Songs in which

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 95

girl's names rhyme and clink like
gilt bangles. All harmless, Phil-
emon; it never did anyone any
harm.

II

I have said — or I will say — that
man's first duty is to protect his
ego.

Man's moral point of departure
is egoism. Egoism is the senti-
mental reflection of the law of
existence, by which the being tends
to persist in his being. The danger-
ous moment — for man as for meta-
zoad — is when he perceives there
are other beings like himself and
sacrifices to them a part of his ego.
There is danger in it; with man

96 THE EGO BOOK

as with metazoad it leads to
reproduction or to death.

And when is it death?

Strangely enough it is death
when one makes the sacrifice of
the Ego for oneself. It is life
when the sacrifice is made for
others. And the ego thus tends
to persist in other beings. '

And this is quite as true in
morals as it is in biology.

It is true in love. You recall,
perhaps, Sallust's brawling ideal
of love: Amare, potavi? Once I
quoted this to Alfred Henry Lewis ;
from the heights of serener wisdom
he said: "To love and labor —
nothing else is worth while.**
Which showed a complete under-

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 97

standing of the law of existence.
Love, necessarily, means a sac-
rifice, greater or less, of the ego;
but by his work in the world man
may make good the quotidian loss.
Men who make of love the only
purpose of their lives belong to
that class of self-seeking proto-
zoads who exile themselves from
life. They sacrifice their egos, but
it is a barren and suicidal sacrifice.
These are usually men of a coarse
type and it is difficult to make it
clear to them that their kind of
love should not dominate a life
that thinks. That type of man
hardly belongs in this book; for
him love is death — what his ego
has to fear is not absorption, but

98 THE EGO BOOK

dispersion, as a naked worm
dropped into an ant-heap is
multitudinously dispersed. My
thoughts are with the finer man,
the superior man, whose sacrifice
is fruitful. For him there is danger.

Without irony and without bit-
terness, without cynicism and
without impudence, tranquilly, as
one recites an axiom of rectilinear
geometry, I say: "When a man
loves a woman he stands in peril
of his life and of his immortality;
and the finer the man the greater
is his peril. "

I do not mean only the man of
genius; to him woman has often
been nefast. (It would be all
right were she content to sit and

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 99

warm herself at the fire of his
endeavor and toil and celebrity;
but she will insist upon toasting
herrings on it.)

Any man who thinks and feels
in a fine way stands in the same
danger. And the danger is that
she will tie a ribbon (and bell) to
his ego. Her constancy, her devo-
tion, her abnegation serve only to
increase his dependence upon her;
and this dependence lessens the
man and limits his activities. Her
sentimental happiness increases in
proportion to what he gives her of
himself — his sacrifice of some es-
sential right of the ego.

Courage, Philemon; and make
fast the gate of your citadel.

100 THE EGO BOOK

Things would go much better in
this world if lovers would only
remember how that first metazoad
wasted his life in that first wild
peranucleary kiss — and take warn-
ing.

The man must love the woman.
The peril must be faced. And
there is only one way, I believe,
in which a man may sacrifice
himself and yet live. I shall point
out the way and name a man who
walked therein.

Ill

And, first, as Mrs. Glasse said
in the immortal cook-book, catch
your hare.

One day word was brought to me

A LOVER'S PROTECTION loi

that Rufus was a lover. He was
not a lover by choice. He was a
lover as one is lion or shark or
earthquake or cataract, simply be-
cause it is absolutely indispensable
to be the thing it is decreed one
shall be, and no other thing. But
it would take a little more than
the language of man to express how
imperiously the Law of Things
must have wished this especial
man to be a lover, for everything
in him cried out against it. Rufus
was not bom for love. He was
forced into it. In some strange
way he had foreknowledge of its
coming, as cattle scent a far-off
storm. He began by talking of it.
"Do you know," he would say,

102 THE EGO BOOK

"somewhere there is a woman
wholly like the woman of my
dreams and for whom I represent
all happiness. What life does she
lead? I do not know. But I
know her nature, her aptitudes, her
silent aspirations. And of late
I have begun to realize that she
shares my dream — that she, too,
is waiting — that far from me she
waits and hopes — even as I,"
said Rufus, "even as I!"

Of course he met her.

Now Rufus was a rectangular,
iron-brained, legal sort of a man;
his hair, which in boyhood had
been red, was grouse-colored; he
had already begun to look like a
sort of man who would sit on a

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 103

judicial bench looking down with
disfavor upon murderers and bad
husbands and reformers.

And what was the woman of his
dream, when she appeared in real
Hfe?

She was taller than Rufus — one
of those tall, undulating blonde
women, who seemed to have
washed their hair in saffron and
star dust and stolen purple irises
for eyes. I thought of Dr. Bara-
duc and said: "The ideographic
chart of the vibrations of her
disharmonious life is written
over with the odd multiples of
five:

"5 — sadness and monotony.
15 — aimless desires.

104 THE EGO BOOK

25 — ennui and nervous disorder.

35 — visions — hysteria" and I
pitied Rufus.

But Rufus, having met her in
dreams, knew more of her than I
did, more than Dr. Baraduc's
biometer could tell me. He had
sensed finer vibrations. That
must have been a wonderful mo-
ment when the iron man told the
pale, saffron-headed woman he
loved her. To me and you it
seemed a shocking thing like be-
trothing a water-lily to a firefly.
But Rufus knew; long before he
saw the long, drooping body she
walked the world in, he had met
her in the dreams whereof you
have heard ; and she knew. They

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 105

were not what we thought they
were. Both of them were walking
our world in masks and dominos.
When they were alone they took
off the disguises. Rufus let down
the drawbridge; and what came
down the drawbridge toward her
was the gallant est, tallest, smiling-
est bridegroom of a man imagin-
able— who was no other than the
Gentleman Inside. And when
Marcelle (I didn't mean to write
her name, but "Machtoub, " says
the Arab: it is written) — when
Marcelle came out of her saffron-
headed, narrow, white body, she
was not at all the woman you or
I could know, but someone shining
and straight as a sword — a flame

io6 THE EGO BOOK

without vacillation — the radiant
Lady Inside.

Rufus had discovered the great
truth.

The only woman a man need
fear is the woman he does not
know.

Is it clear?

Only the masked woman in
domino is dangerous. From her,
O superior man, flee for your life
and your immortality. She is the
ego-eater. She is the devourer of
individuality. But when the Lady
Inside steps forth she leaves her
weapons and her destructiveness
behind. You may go up to her
confidently, smiling. You she can-
not hurt, though you stand there

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 107

so naked that even your very hands
are empty.

That was Rufus's way. It was
easy for him because, even as a
boy, he had acquired the knack of
letting down the drawbridge of his
fortress, and, in addition, he had
the uncommon advantage of hav-
ing met Marcelle's Inside Passen-
ger when it was bathing radiantly
in dreams. Even without those
advantages it may be done; and
must, indeed, be done if the sacri-
fice the ego makes for love's sake is
not to be a deadly and lethal thing.

IV

A deadly and lethal thing —
Only you and I and, perhaps,

io8 THE EGO BOOK

one very old man remember now
that slim girl of long ago — all hair
and eyes and beauty, like a Persian
kitten. One would have said she
was bom to go down the way of
life care-free and conquering ; with
flowers and sunlight and laughter
for her share of the world. None
of us saw that what was strongest
in her was a passion for self-
sacrifice that was neither to bind
nor to hold. We thought she was
bom for a ribboned and holidaying
love.

This is as much of Kathryn's
story as can be told: she met a
guilty man.

What he was guilty of was the
greatest of all sins — the crime

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 109

beside which all other crimes are
virtues — he lacked wings.

When I first saw him I thought
there was something unnatural
about him; after a while I saw it
was his affectation of walking on
two legs, while his real nature was
crying aloud for him to go on all
fours. With that a personable
youth, with great soft eyes and a
mouth red and heavy like some
kind of marsh-plant. At that time
he used to quiver with a kind of
exaltation, for love had touched
with biiming finger-tips his wing-
less body. He was at his best, for
even that bad kind of love adds
something; but his best was so base
it called aloud for reformation.

no THE EGO BOOK

It was in Kathryn's destiny to hear
that call.

' * None of you tinderstands him, ' '
she would say softly, as she stood
watching him go away into the
night — insolent in his happiness,
and on his lips the taste of June
roses and honey.

I wish I could say that the death
of that wingless scoundrel was
befitting his life; that the three
Noms saw to it ; but I cannot, for
he still walks the earth — ^with
the same absurd affectation of not
going on all fours.

But who am I and who are you
to judge the Man Inside his foul,
vice-choked dwelling?

It was not for the part of him

A LOVER'S PROTECTION in

we see that little Kathryn made of
herself a sacrifice and a burned
offering.

The thing is terribly hard to
understand. For years whenever
I thought of it I was beaten upon
by iron winds of wrath. That
some love must be all sacrifice, I
know; but that it shoiild be hers!
She was so young and small. And
I know that her sacrifice, since it
was for another and not for self,
had in it the seeds of life and
immortality. It was in the way
of evolution. It was with the
inflexible law and not against it.

But could she have protected
herself?

No one else could protect her.

112 THE EGO BOOK

What was to be done she had to
do for herself. And she could do
nothing because the one thing she
wanted to do was to sacrifice
herself. Not going blindly about
it, she saw the beginning of the
road and perhaps the end of
it.

It would seem, then, that the
woman stands in as dire peril of
love as the man. If, when she
goes forth from her fortress and
comes to a barred door; if, when
she beats her little hands on the
barred door it does not open; if,
when she calls aloud there is No
One Inside who can come out to
her; then she can do only what
Kathryn did — choose that sacri-

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 113

fice of the ego in which there is life,
not death.

There is small record of it all
now — merely the white stone with
part of her name on it; and yotir
fading memory, and mine.

And how shall one know when
one has met The Woman, she
who is ipsissima?

Is it this tall girl, healthy,
valiant, and gay? Is it that dark
girl, all flame and mystery?

Only she can give you the
answer; you alone can hear it.

But (frankly) I think you can
get a hint of whether she is The
Woman or not, if you are able

114 THE EGO BOOK

(in utter honesty) to say to the
Man Inside you: "All is well, for
I look upon her as the eventual
mother of my children."

That is a splendid saying; splen-
did as quartz — and in it gold
striations of immortalities.

And she?

How may she know this red and
violent Rufus is The Man; he who
is ipsissimus?

She alone can tell; for only
she can hear the voice from
within.

But (frankly) I think she may
get a hint as to whether he is The
Man or not, if she can say to The
Lady Inside: "All is well, dear
one; I look upon him in the fine

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 115

Roman way as cunarum emptor —
a buyer of cradles."

And I think of a baby crawling
on the floor; when a baby, crawl-
ing on the floor, finds anything
there — from a beetle to a button —
he puts it in his mouth. And I
think of woman, wandering about
the earth and going to and fro in
it; when a woman finds anything
bright, absurd, and casual, she
picks it up and puts it on her head?
It doesn't matter what it is — a
beetle, a button, a dead bird, a
bunch of grass, a scarlet rag, glass
beads, the skin of a frog or the
tail of a squirrel — anything gay
and foolish. I do not know that
any scientist has explained why

ii6 THE EGO BOOK

women — always and in every land
and on every degree of latitude —
put these strange and dreadful
things on their heads. Philoso-
phers have never given a solu-
tion of this amazing habit. My
own theory (I think) is sound.

For ages women have been
putting these ridiculous things on
their heads with the sly, indirect
desire of making men see that they
are uncrowned. What she is try-
ing to say in her oblique way is:
"Don't you see, you've forgotten
to give me a crown!" The idiot
does not see; he is a blind ass;
and the patient woman goes on
putting bright things on her head,
in the long hope that some day he

A LOVER'S PROTECTION 117

will see what she is hinting at.
Every woman knows, at heart,
that she ought to have a crown.
This belief is embedded in her
nature, like a triangle in a circle.
Beautiful or ugly, chatelaine or
serf, she has an instinctive knowl-
edge that she is only provisorily
inferior; and she is right — some-
where down the lane of evolution
there waits for her a splendid,
spiritual revenge.

But O woman, do not take it yet ;
above all do not take it upon that
little ego in the cradle, squalling
"I am I." He too is aged and
hunting for a crown, as you are.

If he is haughty, humor him;
treat him as a distinguished guest

ii8 THE EGO BOOK

— a man of some celebrity, who is
stopping in your house for a while.
Bear with him — even as you have
borne him.

And don't be a mother to him.

Chapter V

How to Get What Yo« "Want; Also How

to Ptevcnt Others From Taking

It Away From You

Y

{"'\ ^OU have not said a word
about physical health."
Quite true; so far I
have not said anything about the
body's well-being. Of course it is
an essential thing; indeed the most
essential thing; for there is small
pleasure in possessing gold basins
if you can spit only blood into

119

120 THE EGO BOOK

them; but I have taken it for
granted that you will house the
Gentleman Inside in a cleanly and
nobly-kept mansion. That is un-
derstood.)

You have seen the ego wake,
screaming to a knowledge of its
glorious self; you have seen its
pathetic struggle to hold its own
in a clash of family interests; you
have seen it go warily round friend
and foe, seeking a way of captur-
ing those fortresses; and you have
seen it in the more perilous adven-
tures of love and marriage.

And now (are you quite com-
fortable? Let me put a pillow
at your back). I am going to
ask you to consider the ego —

GETTING AND KEEPING 121

the Man Inside — in its broader
relationship to that group, which
is known as htunanity. At this
point, you see, one may go down
one of many roads. Up to this
point we have come down a high-
way; here the ways branch and
cross Hke the nerves in the hand.
And here one must pick and
choose.

I do not know what your business
in the world is; I do not greatly
care; it may be carving heroic,
eternal statues like George Gray
Barnard; it may be, like James
Huneker, fashioning (of steel and
gold and crystal) perfect prose;
it may be splitting matches —
dreary work if the knife be dull;

122 THE EGO BOOK

it may be breeding orchids; it
may be writing fugues, or building
walls, or scouring sewers, or selling
coats, or buying money; whatever
it is, I am going to write about it.

And first of all

The world belongs to the man
who is aware of his ego.

The world, I say, belongs to the
man who knows himself and who is
so entirely the master of his will
and his thought, that he can do
things without giving men any
answer other than "yes" or "no"
— indifferently — all his life long.
That man is Bismarck; that man
is every man who has ever held
the world in his hands.

He knows himself; he has come

GETTING AND KEEPING 123

to a clear understanding with his
ego; and he knows exactly what
he wants to do — exactly.

I met (it was in a book) one
of Gorki's Homeric tramps; his
name was Malva; and his con-
fession was, in its essence, the
confessions of all the wastrels on
earth. Said Malva:

"If I'd only been able to know
what I wanted! I have always
wanted something! I wish — what?
— I don't know. Sometimes I
want to leap into a balloon and
go oversea, far-away, very far.
Then again, I shoiild like to turn
all men into tops and set them
spinning round and round in front
of me. I should like to look at

124 THE EGO BOOK

them and laugh. Sometimes I
am sorry for all the world and for
myself, especially for myself. And
at another time I feel like killing
everybody in horrible ways — and
myself too. And I don't know
what I want."

That is the wastrel, a Homeric
one if you will, but still the eternal
wastrel. This evening (as I walked
out with my dog) I saw him sitting
on a bench in the park, ragged,
patient as though he expected the
East Wind to bring him supper and
a tent — the man who did not
know what he wanted; the man
who was not on speaking terms
with his ego and could in nowise
find out what he wanted. A less

GETTING AND KEEPING 125

Homeric Malva; and a passing
policeman prodded him with a club
and he drifted on, no- whither.

You can have what you want —
if you know what it is you want,
and if you and the Man Inside are
of one mind. You must get it
clear in your understanding that
he is the head of the firm. He it
was (and no other) who woke and
roared: "Lo, I am I." It was
he who rode, conquering, down
love's road. And unless he shouts
through your mouth, your voice is
but a whisper and no man will
heed it. Unless his voice is speak-
ing, the Adversary will not go back
when you bid him go back and
give you room and place.

126 THE EGO BOOK

(The Adversary?

You know what I mean; the
Adversary is anonymous because
he is collective — he is all things
and all men. The harshness of
any one man to you is only the
advanced, out-thrust point of the
harshness of mankind to man-
kind. The child who dirties you
as you pass is not throwing his
own dirt; it is the dirt of a city,
a caste, a civilization. The Ad-
versary is terrible because he is
collective.)

If you are on good terms with
the Man Inside ; if you know what
the ego wants, you have but to
step forth and take it in your
hands.

GETTING AND KEEPING 127
II

There has been coming into the
world of late a kind of ego that
wanted wealth.

I rather admire that sort of man.
There is something splendid about
riches — a splendor so captivating
that in many religions you will find
heaven pictured as a kind of ideal-
ized goldsmith's shop.

Wealth is ennobling.

Do not lend ear to the harsh
cries of the poor man, who is, in
our civilization, merely a man who
wants to be rich; riches make for
virtue. To be rich is to be three-
parts of the way on to perfection.
To be poor — O rare Owen Feltham !

128 THE EGO BOOK

— is to be made a pavement for the
tread of full-minded men.

Quisquis habet nummos

(There is, I admit, something
mystic and salvational about
poverty; it is indeed a sacred
thing — a sacred attribute of Divine
Integrity, which has always come
into the world, symbolically, with
empty hands; but that mysticism
has no place in this book.)

Wealth is good.

That was a fine Aryan saying:
"He who sows com sows holiness " ;
it lies at the basis of our Aryan
civilization.

I happen to have met (casually)
one of these egos who come into the
world bent upon getting wealth.

GETTING AND KEEPING 129

It was housed in the body of an old
man — an old man, incredibly alert
and awake and shrewd. Under
the name of Mr. John D. Rocke-
feller he had come to Compiegne
in France in order to escape the
ennuis and notorieties of being the
richest man in America. And he
used to "potter about" the streets
and roads. Not idly. Many things
had happened in that pleasant
comer of the world — things mem-
orable, epochal, eternal. They in-
terested him not at all. Not idly,
he went about asking : * ' How much
do these workingmen get? How
much can they live on? What
is the price of this — and that — and
what are the taxes? "

130 THE EGO BOOK

Day after day, he put this kind
of questions to the men he met in
his walks. Every question had
to do with his life purpose, which
is, I presume, getting wealth.

It was right. His will was
shaped, one-pointed, like a spear.
It wasn't like a wheel and it
wasn't like a skein of tangled wool.
He and the Man Inside were of one
mind and of one will ; they wanted
wealth; and — I trust I am not
violating his confidence — they got
it.

As you may.

As any man may and indeed
must, if his will, one-pointed like a
spear, is aimed at that thing and
no other. When I say will, I

GETTING AND KEEPING 131

mean will; I mean the decree,
unalterable, irrecusable, of the ego;
I mean the indefectible warrant of
the Man Inside ; that is the will.

It is true — ^it is a desolating truth
— ^that in that high sense of the
word very few men have a will at
all.

They have wants; they have
desires; but the Inner Man sends
forth no fierce and blasting ukase:
"Thus Do Thou!"

Yet these flabby things with-
out a will — ^with only desires — get
what they really want. Marvel-
ously, mysteriously, every man
gets what he wishes most to have.
The strong self -knowing, ego-ac-
quainted man wills: "I shall be

132 THE EGO BOOK

rich"; and he is rich. The man
whose ego is within him, Hke a
blind stariing in a cage, has no
will; instead he has only wishes —
futile, fluttering, feeble, feckless
things; but even they have their
way with him. He is their victim ;
he is not the master, as one whose
victorious will is a ukase of the Tsar
Within; but they have their way.

That wastrel in the park, prod-
ded by Law in Buttons; he was
precisely what his desires had
made him.

And that tawdry girl, shaming
the street-lamps?

And that drunkard, taking the
edge of the alley or smouldering
in his club?

GETTING AND KEEPING 133

What they most desire they
have; for it is an iron law that no
man shall fail of his desire.

Ill

Wealth?

You shall have it, if that be the
"will of the Man Inside.

Power?

You shall have it, if the Tsar
Inside decrees it.

Wisdom?

If He Within has willed it, you
shall have wisdom.

It is ordained by a law as
inflexible and timeless as that
which makes of every atom a tiny
solar system spinning in decent
order. The law is absolute as an

134 THE EGO BOOK

axiom ; but it has a corollary. And
this is a truth so important that
it would be well, I think, to stand
back for a moment and look at it
in perspective. One might even
approach it by way of Ben Bolt.

Ben Bolt is my saddle-horse,
a noble, sorrel-coated gentleman
such as it was the good fortune of
Captain Gulliver to know. (The
account is in his travels.)

I ride Ben Bolt; I get astride
his spine and grip his barrel with
my thighs and bid him trot — and
he trots ; I lift the reins in a know-
ing way and he breaks into that
glorious, tumbling gallop which
takes us over the long hills into
the sunrise. Now when we come

GETTING AND KEEPING 135

back (after the glorious sweat and
triumph of that gallop) I rub him
down (if Edward isn't about) and
wash his feet and swab out his good
old mouth and give him the free-
dom of his box-stall. In other
words I have used Ben Bolt, but
he is better — as I am — for the
using.

That is the corollary, whereof we
had word.

A man may gain power, but he
cannot guard it, unless he so uses
his power that others are the
better for it — that they are made
stronger and more capable of exer-
cising power themselves. • You do
not want illustrations of that fact
out of history; all history is an

136 THE EGO BOOK

illustration of it. In the immense
pentimbral forest of historic As-
similations there is always the same
story — ^the same infinitely com-
plicated web of the same eternal
fact — which is : No man may have
power unless others are the better
for his having it. And what is
true of power is true of wealth;
and of wisdom — only he possesses
wisdom who scatters it.

Do you mind glancing back at
the ground we have covered in
this chapter?

There are certain statements
upon which I should like to lay
the emphasis of repetition.

What the Inner Man wills he
may have — must have, in fact.

GETTING AND KEEPING 137

And if there be no assertive ego,
declaring its will, and its purpose,
then the vague, futile wishes will
have their way. (Have you ever
met a wisher? — who pauses at a
shop window and says: "I wish
I had that watch!" and hails the
passing motor-car with: "I wish
I had that car!" None of these
things will he have; what he will
get is full opportunity to exercise
this wantoning habit of mind;
and his life, taking the way of
least resistance, will go to slavery,
drunkenness, the commonness of
street-lamps, or that eternal wish-
ing-place, the bench in the park.)

What the man wills

The will of the ego is iron; it is

138 THE EGO BOOK

pointed like a flame; it shows the
way. If you and the Man Inside
have made your purpose wealth
you can achieve your end; but
you may not wanton by the way.
Like that old, ardent, and active
man of Compiegne, you must think
of nothing else — you must think
all things in terms of wealth. But
(the corollary!) riches that make
another poorer are not riches;
they are loot. Is it possible to
get rich by making others richer?
My dear son of the Quirites, there
is no other way, which is, at once
practical and permanent. The
man who makes others poorer is
always poor; the miser is always
in want — indeed, the very word

GETTING AND KEEPING 139

miser has a mysterious significance
of want, destitution, misery. The
reason is plain. The miser fails to
see that he is not alone and cannot
be alone, that he is, indeed, only
part of a formidable whole. Your
ego learned that truth long ago.
And you know that wealth, power,
wisdom are as a flowing stream,
which is sweet because it flows — •
past your garden to your neigh-
bor's field. If it did not flow
away from you it would not be a
stream; it would be a pond, which
is the home of dead dogs and
poison.

Then, once more, the will must
be fixed on one object — not on two
or seven objects. A bullet will

140 THE EGO BOOK

bring the quarry down; that is
will ; the quarry is wholly indiffer-
ent to the scattered shot of fuga-
cious wishes and hopes and desires.

The man who gets what he
wants is one-purposed.

As from a cellar of discontent,
I hear a pleading voice ; and it asks :

"May I have no pleasures at
all?"

Dear son of the Quirites, the
only pleasures you can have are
those which fit in with your pur-
pose, those which affirm the will,
those which build the conquering
character.

"A poor, barren life," you say.

But, don't you see, that if you
are following the way of the ego —

GETTING AND KEEPING 141

the straight Hne of the will — you
are getting all you want, everything
you want — everything. What
other pleasure is there? None.

You may have observed that
nothing makes a rich man so
indignant as the sight of a poor
man spending money on his amuse-
ments.

At first glance you feel like
throwing a brick at the rich man.
A moment's reflection will show
you that the rich man (from his
viewpoint) is right. His object
in life is so clear and pleasant — it
is getting wealth — that he can
conceive of no other tolerable
occupation; he looks upon the
poor man, seeking amusement, as

142 THE EGO BOOK

a wantoner. What he forgets is
that the poor man may be seeking
other things — wisdom, perhaps;
and finds pleasure hunting a way
of getting wisdom.

Know yourself: learn what the
ego wants — and neither men, nor
castes, nor cities can prevent your
getting it. It is a law; just as it
is a law that you can keep nothing
unless other men, castes, cities,
are the better for your having it.

" Machtoub, " said the Arab,
once again: it is written.

IV

If your choice is not wealth, but
wisdom, you will admire the sage
prayer of Apollonius :

GETTING AND KEEPING 143

it •

1 pray that justice may pre-
vail, that laws may not be broken,
that the wise may be poor and the
rest of mankind rich — ^but not by
fraud."

Oiapter VI

The Hive and The Bee

I

rE emerging ego is bom
into a city, a caste, a civil-
ization; which is a strange
thing. And — a stranger thing —
every man is the siim-total of his
race.

(This does away with any feeHng
of loneliness.)

When one thinks of the millions
of Smiths and Montmorencies, of

Mclngaracks and Browns that
144

THE HIVE AND THE BEE 145

have gone to one's making, a
bewildered sense of kinship takes
hold of one. One hesitates to
throw a stone at a blind beggar for
fear one might really be hitting a
cousin — only thrice removed. One
cannot comfortably poison a well,
for fear one of his innimierable
relations may not drink of it.
One never knows. The proudest
man may, in some dark way, be
sib to an Ulsterman. In the face
of this blasting possibility one has
to walk warily down the crowded
way of the world.

I have said that every atom in
you is a solar system en miniature;
and so are you a solar system; and
so are the caste, the city, the

146 THE EGO BCMDK

civilization into which you and
your atoms are bom. It is a
thought to set the brain rocking —
this implacable unity of visibles
and invisibles, of the infinitely
small and the infinitely great.
And fearfully one asks: "What is
to become of my ego in this welter-
ing unity?"

Bide a bit ; you may see.

One of man's peculiar privileges
is his curious faculty of seeing
himself as other than he is.

He occupies in space a planet of
absolutely no cosmic importance;
and, absurdly small as his planet
is, his life is so short that he never
manages to crawl round it before
death takes him. (It took him

THE mVE AND THE BEE 147

thousands of years to learn that
his earth was round; and thou-
sands more to know it was ovoid ;
if, by change, it is square, he will
not discover it for twenty — or
forty — centuries to come.)

At this point a realization of his
own insignificance beats in upon
him. He looks about him. What
he sees is that he is in an ant-heap
where millions upon millions of his
kind, recognizably like himself,
swarm and fester. And he says:
"God help me! do I indeed exist?
Am I not a mere conjunct part of
this awful and turbulent unity —
not to be isolated!"

The man whose ego is awake has
passed this point; long ago he has

148 THE EGO BOOK

answered this black and fear-
ful riddle; victoriously he has
shouted his: "I am — thou art —
the other is." He knows; but
his battle is none the less
savage.

The collective soul is always
armed against the individual who
tries to escape from it.

The collective soul?

The phrase is in Pythagoras.
He warned the Crotonians that a
village has a soul made of the con-
sensus of its inhabitants. The
soul of united villages forms the
soul of a people; and at this point
of accumulated force there is gener-
ated the monstrous entity called
country — patria — an abstract col-

THE HIVE AND THE BEE 149

lectivity. You may indeed think
of it as a monster more terrible
than the minotaur — its hecatombs
are wars, his rites armed peace.
We are looking upon this collec-
tivity as a monster, because that
is precisely what it is, so far as the
individual is concerned. It is a
polypus with monstrous tentacles
— political, military, judicial, edu-
cational; and from it the individ-
ual cannot escape; he must live
in its tentacular orbit, amid the
whirling arms and sucking mouths.
Some men have escaped from it,
you say ? Few men ; mostly mani-
acs; escape is hardly possible.
The cat puts up with an inquiet
and precarious existence, rather

150 THE EGO BOOK

than identify itself, doggishly, with
a master; but man has not feline
freedom — ^he is tied to the collec-
tivity; he is part of it, just as he
is part of all the Smiths and
Smythes and the man (God
help him!) from the North of
Ireland.

One's ego is in a bad way, it
would seem, soused and immersed
in a sea of universal kinship; and,
when it lifts its head above water,
it is gripped and strangled by the
polypus — by the collectivity of
race, caste, country.

How is the ego to preserve its
free identity? — its right to vo-
ciferate "I am I" — ^in this welter
of opposing forces?

THE mVE AND THE BEE 151
II

Two things are to be borne in
mind.

Evolution works for the type
and not for the mass — for the
individual and not for the col-
lectivity. It has worked for you,
my dear Philemon, perfecting that
rare force, which is your ego, but
— a bi-partite law — while it was
pushing you forward, it was urging
forward, also, the mass of hu-
manity from which you have not
wholly emerged. You are, I as-
sume, the advanced point — the
most advanced point — of himian-
ity, but you can travel no faster
than the mass to which you are

152 THE EGO BOOK

linked. (A composite mass, made
up of strata of life-animal, vege-
table, mineral. You are cousin
to the field-mouse and the terra-
pin; even the stone they will lay
upon your grave is a dumb, dark-
brooding brother.)

It is a tragic law that if you
wotdd go fast and far you must
haul after you — far and fast — the
mass behind you. And it follows
that your good is the good of all.
Of course this is a commonplace —
as common as sunlight — an old
universal truth.

Your good is the good of all.

It is a statement which contains
all truth, moral, political, eco-
nomical ; precisely as all geometric

THE HIVE AND THE BEE 153

elements are contained in a circle,
all truths are packed into that one
true saying: Unless a thing be
good for the hive it is not good
for the bee.

That is all very well, you say,
but how am I to protect my ego —
which after all is my main concern ;
how am I to pay my debt to the
hive and yet protect myself?

It is the one question of import-
ance; it has been asked in tumult
and revolution; it has been an-
swered in slavery and despair. It
is a dilemma; in fact it is the
unhappy dilemma of Balaam's
ass, which was that either he must
fall down flat or run upon a sword.

Every philosophy the world has

154 THE EGO BOOK

ever had has been an attempt to
solve this riddle. Every experi-
ment in government has been
another attempt. Man has never
done anything but try to find a
way of living with safety, con-
venience, and delight among the
miiltitudinous entities that sur-
round him. He has done nothing
but try to live in the hive, while
preserving his own indomitable
sense of individual bee-hood — of
remaining a nobly-isolated, self-
respecting bee.

You do not expect me, Phile-
mon, to give you a rule which shall
answer this old question; but it
may be that along this line of
thought you will find a suggestion.

THE mVE AND THE BEE 155

Evolution is working with you;
it is striving to create out of the
mass a perfecter type of man; it
has absolutely no concern what-
soever for the mass; its concern is
wholly with you — its type. Now,
the more vehemently you affirm
your ego, the more surely are you
working with the law of evolution
— toward what end I know not,
save in so far as having seen the
beginning of the curve of life I
can plot the continuing direction,
mathematically exact, of the curv-
ing line.

Every affirmation of your ego
is with the law. You cannot
exaggerate the tremendous import-
ance of clearing a space round

156 THE EGO BOOK

your ego — so that it may stand,
like a statue in a public square, the
light and air and ether all round
it. You cannot be too positively
Philemon. If you are John Smith,
you must John-Smith yourself with
hourly affirmation; and if you are
Cecil Smythe, you must know,
with granite certainty, that you
are he. You are John or you are
Cecil only because you have, with
infinite age-long effort, projected
yourself out of the mass — the
anonymous Johnless and Cecilless
collectivity; and the moment you
cease to affirm it, that moment you
begin to slide back into the con-
fused and unidentified mass. Your
only way of life is to be victoriously

THE HIVE AND THE BEE 157

John Smith — or Philemon; your
only grip on immortality is your
John-Smithness. There is no other
passport to life.

And the other bees in the
hive?

Unless they are living with
safety and convenience (if not
with delight) you will find small
opportunity for being Philemon,
ipsissimus. Thus it is a duty to
yourself to see that there is har-
mony in the hive; that there is
honey equally distributed; that
the wax roof is in repair.

The Man Inside you — the Hid-
den Workman, Paracelsus called
him — does not work for others,
except for the compelling reason

158 THE EGO BOOK

that it is only by working for
others that he can get his own
work perfectly done.

Ill

The difference between a poli-
tician and a statesman is not that
the latter is dead and the former
isn't; there is a finer distinction;
the statesman is working for the
state that he may, more splendidly,
advance his ego — making a fitter
world for it to live in; the poli-
tician is burrowing back into
the mass in order to find safe-
ty, warmth, fat comfort for
himself.

One is going with evolution; it
is the way of life; the other is

THE HIVE AND THE BEE 159

going death's way back to col-
lective anonjmiity.

You are living in a caste, a city,
a nation.

The form of government in
which you live does not greatly
matter; and cannot indeed be
changed until the mass has changed
— has got at another stage of ev-
olution— for government is a na-
tural product of the mass. The
same law which directs the tiny
cell directs the man; and the same
law which directs the man directs
the himian collectivity. Scien-
tifically. Immutably. The gov-
ernment, whether it was called
theocracy, monarchy, republic, or
empire, was always exactly fitted

i6o THE EGO BOOK

to the collective mass of humanity,
at the stage of development it had
then reached.

To-day a social transformation
has unquestionably begun. The
himian mass has changed its place
along the road of evolution.

When will the transformation
get itself accomplished?

In ten years — in a hundred — in
two hundred; in a timeless world
there is no need of greater pre-
cision. In a certain time there
will be a new and happier life on
earth, because the advancing col-
lectivity will find it has produced
a hive-law which fits it more
comfortably than the existing one.

(One might note — by the way —

THE HIVE AND THE BEE i6i

that there is not to-day among
civilized powers a monarchy ; there
is not a republic. There is only
one form of government and it
may be defined as an emporocracy
— a government of economic in-
terests— shop rule; and the dif-
ficulty there is in adjusting it to
latter-day htimanity is to be
found in its impossible alliance of
two principles — the oligarchy of
the emporium and the popular
will.)

The transformation has begun.

Civilization is planning a better-
fitting government. We shall not,
I daresay, participate in this new
and more harmoniously ordered
life; but

i62 THE EGO BOOK

Here is the essence of it

It is in view of that life that we
exist and for it that we suffer;
we create it; it is the purpose of
our Hf e — the purpose of our strug-
gle. (No matter how blindly we
go, vagabonds, deserters, enemies
of the mass, we are, in spite of all,
useful and necessary to those who
come after us.)

Evolution works through the
mass toward a type; and having
created a stark efficient type it
uses it as a snubbing-post to haul
the mass along another stage on its
journey.

Make strong your ego — for it
must carry the weight of humanity !

Let it go fast and far along its

THE HIVE APTO THE BEE 163

imperious way, O Philemon — for
you are scouting down the long
road where humanity must follow.

And not himianity alone.

Make the way straight, also,
for your brother, the field-mouse,
and your obscure cousin, the eel.

Chapter VII
How to be Good to Yourself When Dead
I

FOR, I take it, you will die.
And when you are dead
some pale woman, at your
head (always there are pale women
bending over their dead), will say
softly: "A man is dead. A himian
rhythm is destroyed. So forever is
broken that human form of the
imiversal rhythm and the series of
things it accomplished. He Who

Was is reduced to insensible mole-
164

GCX)DNESS PERPETUABLE 165

cules lost in the universal mechan-
ism of worlds." And the sad
woman, standing at your feet, will
say, softly, too: "Pale sister of the
Man Who Was, the vibration of
life cannot be destroyed any more
than midnight, with its folds, can
muffle the vibrations of sound, or
stay the winged vibratory light.
At the head of this dead man is a
candle. Stoop, sister, and blow it
out. Already the little light of
the candle is far away — voyaging;
a second has passed and its waves
are beating on the edges of the
moon; in fifty-two minutes it will
be shining on Jupiter; and in
exactly seventy-one years and
eight months and twenty -four

i66 THE EGO BOOK

days it will be glittering on the
metallic peaks of the star Capella;
and passing on. You cannot stop
that ray of light in its eternal
way. You cannot bid any vi-
bration cease. There is the candle.
Here lies the man. The light
of the extinguished candle is on its
eternal way ; and what of Him Who
Was? That force, O woman at
the head of the corpse, was per-
petuable, as every other force. Of
what tree is it the seed?"

Thus they who wash the corpse.

No one has ever said anything
else — ^the endless retorts of "yes"
and "no."

You, perhaps, know that nothing
dies.

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 167

It was only the other day I saw
Cleopatra dancing in the wind.
All her dainty body, naked as a
flower, swayed for me; her pretty
body that all the stones of Egypt
— all the herbs and incantations of
the Magi — could not keep cov-
ered. She was dancing in a gar-
den. The garden is that of the
Bibliotheque Nationale, facing the
rue Vivienne, in Paris. You may
know that tmtil 1870 her mummy
— and those of certain attending
high priests — was in the Biblio-
theque. The men of science had
unwrapped the mummy in order
to study the hieroglyphs on the
wrappings. During the siege of
Paris (what time the Vemis of

i68 THE EGO BOOK

Milo was buried in a subterranean
crypt of the Palais de Justice, in
reasonable fear of the barbarians)
the little body of Cleopatra was
hidden away in the cellars of the
rue Richelieu. There she lay as in
the damp and density of a tomb.
Came peace; and when they took
her up the Queen of Egypt poi-
soned the air.

Thus a second time she died.
And was buried in the garden.
And now, in strange, many-co-
lored flowers, she dances in the
wind.

(That is tolerable; but often
when I have pondered upon the
somber and violent things that go
on in the grave of "eternal repose "

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 169

— the swarming helminths and all
the inexpressible degradations of
this poor flesh so vainly spiritual-
ized— I have echoed the heroic
wish of Saint Paul — he who wished
to be buried by the lions of the
desert !)

And there is of the Queen of
Egypt nothing left save the dan-
cing flowers?

You were a wise Philemon could
you answer that. Between those
two thoughts — she is, she was —
open chasms of darkness, rocks,
and ghostly tempests. One thing
only: You cannot destroy a vibra-
tion. Not that of the smallest star
in the constellation of the Virgin —
a light vibration; and not that

I70 THE EGO BOOK

vibration which was the essential
Cleopatra. Not one vibration ; for,
if you could, this poised and vi-
brant universe, moving down the
groove of law, would fall back
into chaos — the tohu-bohu whence
it has so painfully emerged.

That much is true.

Science (that chameleon!) has
confuted in the last few years the
old dogma of the indestructibility
of matter; but it has not yet
established the dogma that the
ego is destructible — any more
than the eternal-wandering light
is.

I met an old scientist once; he
was sitting by the seashore, think-
ing— with austere arithmetic — of

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 171

the remainder of his days; at last
he looked up and said :

"I have just convinced myself
that auto-survival is a simple act
of the will."

He had touched the edge of the
great truth. If that will, which is
the ego, has truly affirmed itself, it
has truly made itself a part of the
permanent whole. And if you are
that sort of an ego you will find it
far easier to go on being immortal
than to make an end of it.
Only the feebly individualized ego
can drop back lightly and with-
out struggle into the general
mass.

Whence the sad necessity one is
under of continuing to protect his

172 THE EGO BOOK

ego, even when, at head and foot
of his bed, stand the sad, pale
women.

II

I don't think it matters much
how a man dies. Indeed it is not
in a man's power to pick or choose.
Everyone brings with him into the
world the principle of his death.
Thus one man is bom with a
chimney-pot on his head, just as
another man is bom with a bullet
in his breast. Thus it was inde-
fectibly in the destiny of Curie —
the discoverer of radium — to die
with his head under the wheel of a
dray. It was in the destiny of
that poet of blasphemy, CatuUe

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 173

Mendes, to die in the dirt and noise
and midnight of the train-yard
of Saint Germain; and nowhere
else. There was a man named
Zola who spat upon and befouled
an entire generation ; and it was his
perfect destiny to die, drowned in
the vomit of his dogs. That way
and no other. Always man car-
ries with him the principle of his
death. It was a strange and terri-
ble death Huysmanns brought into
the world with him. He was a
worshipper of visible things — of
appearances ; he was an idolater of
insignificancies and glittering toys ;
and he was stricken with a disease
so rare and monstrous they had
to sew up his eyelids. He had

174 THE EGO BOOK

lived to stare and death blinded
him.

You have brought your death
with you; you may have a hang-
man's rope in your pocket — or a
martyr's crown. That is merely
the fulfilling part of a destiny the
curve of which was plotted back
in the twilight of evolution. It
does not greatly matter so long as
your death, like your life, is along
the line of the law. That kind of
death is useful. It is indeed of an
ancient and epochal utility. For it
is back to the exact point where
death appeared — and no farther —
that we can trace the beginning
of evoluting life. The protozoads
are immortal ; that is, they can die

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 175

only as a result of accident, never
of old age. Perhaps it would be a
trifle more precise to say the proto-
zoad is neither mortal nor im-
mortal; it ignores death — having
in it no element of decay. Now
the protozoad is the ancestor of the
metazoads, which are mortal be-
ings. And it is in the course of this
transformation that death makes
its appearance. It is the result of
an adaptation — of a division of the
cell of the protozoad into the cells
of the metazoads. So, from the
evolutionist's viewpoint, life be-
gins exactly where death appears.
There is a distinct relation between
mortality and reproduction. In
other words, life is a piece — defi-

176 THE EGO BOOK

nitely measured — of immortality.
Death serves as the measuring-rod.
That is its utility. It makes for
the variations which are life. It
bisects, at a certain point, the long
immortal curve of life.

Did I say it stopped it?

Nothing can stop it. Whether
you will or not that vibration,
which is you, must go on; and it
must go along the line you have
projected.

The ages, timeless and limitless,
lie behind your ego; but they lie
before it also. You are the centre
of a circle which has no circimi-
ference. All time and all space
are round you. You are in eter-
nity— like a ray of light, speeding

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 177

past Capella and past ever-rising
stars beyond. The ego must go
on; and it must follow the curve
you have given it to travel.

Let me reveal to you, Philemon,
a ghastly and abysmal truth: You
are immortal. Like that far-off
protozoadic ancestor, you are
doomed to ignore death. You
may change, but you cannot die.
From the simple, through the
complex, to the simple; that has
been your ego's road of evolution.
And on? Still going on. To what ?
To exactly what you have made
it ready for.

Matter is vibration. Living
matter is nothing else. And
matter in order to continue to live

178 THE EGO BOOK

must adapt itself to the changes of
the milieu in which it Hves. What
kind of an immortality you are to
have depends entirely upon what
milieu you have fitted yourself to
live in. If you have trained your
ego to live, it will live ; and (formid-
able thought) it will live along the
line you have started it in this
life.

You can protect yourself (when
dead) by so living in this life that
the ego will follow the high road
and not the low road. What you
are you will be. You cannot
change the curve merely by
adroitly slipping out of your
body.

Take the high road, Philemon.

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 179

The fairest company is walking
that road.

Ill

"The law of evolution, briefly
stated, is this: That forms emerge
from a common fund to exhibit
themselves for a brief existence in
manifested form, during which
nature's forces play upon them;
their life within responds; the
external and internal forces co-
operate to raise the manifesting
entity to a higher level; the form,
finally, no longer answers the pur-
pose of its existence; it dissolves;
a return to a common fund is made,
and a subsequent re-emergence
takes place. The gradual perfect-

i8o THE EGO BOOK

ing thus goes on until the limits of
that kingdom are reached, where-
upon the next emergence is into
a higher kingdom. "

I have quoted this paragraph — a
plain statement — from Mr. F. E.
Titus, a very distinguished writer;
and I have quoted it in order to ask
you to apply it to the evolution of
the ego. The law of evolution — if
it be a law at all — is universal,
and its application to the imma-
terial ego is quite as exact as its
application to the material body
in which the Man Inside walks
the world. The gradual perfecting
goes on.

And your re-emergence, Phil-
emon, shall take place.

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE i8i
IV

You shall emerge into a fair
company?

You will find exactly the com-
pany you vibrated to in this vi-
bratory world , You can meet only
those who have projected their
egos out upon curves similar to
your own. The Inside Passengers
who are going your way will alight
at yoiu* station and no other. And
therefore, Philemon, if you would
protect your ego — when, at last,
your strong body lies dead, with
women bending over it — live well
in this world; create only such
vibrations as you would care to
pass eternity withal. And, since

i82 THE EGO BOOK

all is vibration — thought, aspira-
tion, feeling — think highly, aspire
nobly, feel purely.

Then shall you emerge into a
fair company.

I laid down my pen. I said :
"This little book of Good In-
tentions is finished."

And then, I know not how, my
thoughts went out to a sweet, wild
girl I knew in the long ago. (Eyes
the color of a bee, little Kathryn.)
And I wondered whether she were
lonely now. Who could have met
her when she went forth? Long
files of hooded, gray, sacrificial
women? Perhaps there was no

GOODNESS PERPETUABLE 183

one there ; for whenever I dream of
her she is alone. She is standing
in a plain, so wide, so desolate, so
empty, that she shudders with
loneliness; for she is alone in the
desert of her love; and, always, as
she stands there, she cries aloud:
"Is there any Living Man here?"
And to her there comes no
answer. No voice. No sound of
wings.

nsm

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