Under this concept fits a significant class of our basic instinctive impulses. This includes bodily, social and spiritual self-preservation.
Concerns about the physical person. All expedient-reflex actions and movements of nutrition and protection constitute acts of bodily self-preservation. In the same way, fear and anger cause purposeful movement. If by self-care we agree to understand the foresight of the future, as opposed to self-preservation in the present, then we can attribute anger and fear to the instincts that impel us to hunt, seek food, build dwellings, make useful tools and take care of our bodies. However, the last instincts in connection with the feeling of love, parental affection, curiosity and competition extend not only to the development of our bodily personality, but to our entire material «I» in the broadest sense of the word.
Our concern for the social personality expresses itself directly in a feeling of love and friendship, in a desire to draw attention to ourselves and arouse in others amazement, in a feeling of jealousy, a desire for rivalry, a thirst for fame, influence and power; indirectly, they are manifested in all motives for material concerns about oneself, since the latter can serve as a means to the implementation of social goals. It is easy to see that the immediate urges to care for one’s social personality are reduced to simple instincts. It is characteristic of the desire to attract the attention of others that its intensity does not depend in the least on the value of the noteworthy merits of this person, a value that would be expressed in any tangible or reasonable form.
We are exhausted in order to receive an invitation to a house where there is a large society, so that at the mention of one of the guests we have seen, we can say: “I know him well!” — and bow in the street with almost half of the people you meet. Of course, it is most pleasant for us to have friends who are distinguished in rank or merit, and to cause enthusiastic worship in others. Thackeray, in one of his novels, asks readers to confess frankly whether it would be a special pleasure for each of them to walk down Pall Mall with two dukes under his arm. But, not having dukes in the circle of our acquaintances and not hearing the rumble of envious voices, we do not miss even less significant cases to attract attention. There are passionate lovers of publicizing their name in the newspapers — they do not care what newspaper ueku their name will fall into, whether they are in the category of arrivals and departures, private announcements, interviews or urban gossip; for lack of the best, they are not averse to getting even into the chronicle of scandals. Guiteau, the murderer of President Garfield, is a pathological example of the extreme desire for publicity. Guiteau’s mental horizon did not leave the newspaper sphere. In the dying prayer of this unfortunate one of the most sincere expressions was the following: «The local newspaper press is responsible to You, Lord.»
Not only people, but places and objects that are familiar to me, in a certain metaphorical sense, expand my social self. «Ga me connait» (it knows me) — said one French worker, pointing to an instrument that he mastered perfectly. Persons whose opinion we do not value at all are at the same time individuals whose attention we do not disdain. Not one great man, not one woman, picky in all respects, will hardly reject the attention of an insignificant dandy, whose personality they despise from the bottom of their hearts.
In the U.E.I.K. «Care for a Spiritual Personality» should include the totality of the desire for spiritual progress — mental, moral and spiritual in the narrow sense of the word. However, it must be admitted that the so-called concerns about one’s spiritual personality represent, in this narrower sense of the word, only concern for the material and social personality in the afterlife. In the desire of a Mohammedan to get to heaven or in the desire of a Christian to escape the torments of hell, the materiality of the desired benefits is self-evident. From a more positive and refined point of view of the future life, many of its benefits (communion with the departed relatives and saints and the co-presence of the Divine) are only social benefits of the highest order. Only the desire to redeem the inner (sinful) nature of the soul, to achieve its sinless purity in this or future life can be considered care about our spiritual personality in its purest form.
Our broad external review of the facts observed and the life of the individual would be incomplete if we did not clarify the issue of rivalry and clashes between its individual sides. Physical nature limits our choice to one of the many goods that appear to us and desire us, the same fact is observed in this field of phenomena. If only it were possible, then, of course, none of us would immediately refuse to be a handsome, healthy, well-dressed person, a great strong man, a rich man with a million-dollar annual income, a wit, a bon vivant, a conqueror of ladies’ hearts and at the same time a philosopher. , philanthropist, statesman, military leader, African explorer, fashionable poet and holy man. But this is decidedly impossible. The activity of a millionaire does not reconcile with the ideal of a saint; philanthropist and bon vivant are incompatible concepts; the soul of a philosopher does not get along with the soul of a heartthrob in one bodily shell.
Outwardly, such different characters seem to be really compatible in one person. But it is worth really developing one of the properties of character, so that it immediately drowns out the others. A person must carefully consider the various aspects of his personality in order to seek salvation in the development of the deepest, strongest side of his «I». All other aspects of our «I» are illusory, only one of them has a real basis in our character, and therefore its development is ensured. Failures in the development of this side of character are real failures that cause shame, and successes are real successes that bring us true joy. This fact is an excellent example of the mental effort of choice to which I have pointed out so emphatically above. Before making a choice, our thought oscillates between several different things; in this case, it chooses one of the many aspects of our personality or our character, after which we feel no shame, having failed in something that has nothing to do with that property of our character that has focused our attention exclusively on itself.
This explains the paradoxical story of a man shamed to death by the fact that he was not the first, but the second boxer or rower in the world. That he can overcome any man in the world, except one, means nothing to him: until he defeats the first in the competition, nothing is taken into account by him. He doesn’t exist in his own eyes. A frail man, whom anyone can beat, is not upset because of his physical weakness, for he has long abandoned all attempts to develop this side of the personality. Without trying there can be no failure, without failure there can be no shame. Thus, our contentment with ourselves in life is determined entirely by the task to which we dedicate ourselves. Self-esteem is determined by the ratio of our actual abilities to potential, supposed ones — a fraction in which the numerator expresses our actual success, and the denominator our claims:
~C~Self-Respect = Success / Claim
As the numerator increases or the denominator decreases, the fraction will increase. The renunciation of claims gives us the same welcome relief as the realization of them in practice, and there will always be a renunciation of the claim when disappointments are unceasing, and the struggle is not expected to end. The clearest possible example of this is provided by the history of evangelical theology, where we find conviction in sinfulness, despair in one’s own strength, and loss of hope of being saved by good works alone. But similar examples can be found in life at every step. A person who understands that his insignificance in some area leaves no doubts for others, feels a strange heartfelt relief. An inexorable «no», a complete, resolute refusal to a man in love seems to moderate his bitterness at the thought of losing a beloved person. Many residents of Boston, crede experto (trust the one who has experienced) (I’m afraid that the same can be said about residents of other cities), could with a light heart give up their musical «I» in order to be able to mix a set of sounds without shame with symphony. How nice it is sometimes to give up the pretensions to appear young and slim! “Thank God,” we say in such cases, “these illusions have passed!” Every expansion of our «I» is an extra burden and an extra claim. There is a story about a certain gentleman who lost his entire fortune to the last cent in the last American war: having become a beggar, he literally wallowed in the mud, but assured that he had never felt happier and freer.
Our well-being, I repeat, depends on ourselves. “Equate your claims to zero,” says Carlyle, “and the whole world will be at your feet. The wisest man of our time rightly wrote that life begins only from the moment of renunciation.
Neither threats nor exhortations can affect a person if they do not affect one of the possible future or present aspects of his personality. Generally speaking, only by influencing this person can we take control of someone else’s will. Therefore, the most important concern of monarchs, diplomats, and in general all those striving for power and influence is to find in their «victim» the strongest principle of self-respect and make influence on it their ultimate goal. But if a person has abandoned what depends on the will of another, and has ceased to look at all this as part of his personality, then we become almost completely powerless to influence him. The Stoic rule of happiness was to consider ourselves deprived in advance of everything that does not depend on our will — then the blows of fate will become insensitive. Epictetus advises us to make our personality invulnerable by narrowing its content and, at the same time, strengthening its stability: “I must die — well, but must I die without fail complaining about my fate? I will openly speak the truth, and if the tyrant says: “For your words, you are worthy of death,” I will answer him: “Have I ever told you that I am immortal? You will do your job, and I will do mine: your job is to execute, and mine is to die fearlessly; it is your business to cast out, and mine to move fearlessly away. What do we do when we go on a sea voyage? We choose the helmsman and sailors, set the time of departure. On the road, a storm overtakes us. What, then, should be our concern? Our role has already been fulfilled. Further duties lie with the helmsman. But the ship is sinking. What should we do? The only thing that is possible is to fearlessly wait for death, without crying, without grumbling at God, knowing full well that everyone who is born must someday die.
In its time, in its place, this Stoic point of view could be quite useful and heroic, but it must be admitted that it is possible only with the constant inclination of the soul to develop narrow and unsympathetic traits of character. The Stoic operates by self-restraint. If I am a Stoic, then the goods that I could appropriate to myself cease to be my goods, and there is a tendency in me to deny them the value of any goods whatsoever. This way of supporting one’s self by renunciation, the renunciation of goods, is very common among persons who in other respects cannot be called Stoics. All narrow people limit their personality, separate from it everything that they do not firmly own. They look with cold disdain (if not with real hatred) at people who are different from them or not susceptible to their influence, even if these people have great virtues. “Whoever is not for me does not exist for me, that is, as far as it depends on me, I try to act as if he did not exist for me at all,” in this way the strictness and certainty of the boundaries of the personality can compensate for the scarcity of its content.
Expansive people act in reverse: by expanding their personality and introducing others to it. The boundaries of their personality are often rather indefinite, but the richness of its content more than rewards them for this. Nihil hunnanum a me alienum puto (nothing human is alien to me). “Let them despise my modest personality, let them treat me like a dog; as long as there is a soul in my body, I will not reject them. They are realities just like me. Everything that is really good in them, let it be the property of my personality. The generosity of these expansive natures is sometimes truly touching. Such persons are capable of experiencing a peculiar subtle feeling of admiration at the thought that, despite their illness, unattractive appearance, poor living conditions, despite the general neglect of them, they still form an inseparable part of the world of vigorous people, have a comradely share in the strength of draft horses, in the happiness of youth, in the wisdom of the wise, and are not deprived of some share in the use of the wealth of the Vanderbilts and even the Hohenzollerns themselves.
Thus, sometimes narrowing, sometimes expanding, our empirical «I» tries to establish itself in the outside world. The one who can exclaim with Marcus Aurelius: “Oh, the Universe! Everything that you desire, I also desire!”, has a personality from which everything that limits, narrows its content has been removed to the last line — the content of such a personality is all-encompassing.