HILLCREJ.7 BOOKS
 
 
 FOR SALE AT 
 METAPHYSICAL 
 
 ,EGO. CAL. 
 CELLAB. SLCCUM
 
 The Ego Book 
 
 A Book of 
 Selfish Ideals 
 
 By 
 Vance Thompson 
 
 New York 
 
 E. P. Dutton & Company 
 681 Fifth Avenue
 
 Copyright 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 PAGE 
 
 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 Wakes 
 
 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
 
 a THE EGO BOOK 
 
 the human species. It was, in- 
 deed, a new born 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-born 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-born 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 like 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 born, 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-born 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-born 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
 
 io 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 11 
 
 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 
 structure 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-born 
 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 born. 
 
 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 
 born when he emerges into an 
 environment where he is per- 
 mitted to be himself and where 
 he may, triumphantly, affirm his 
 individuality. Now this does not 
 happen to one new-born 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-born 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-born 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 (ferreus 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 presume,
 
 16 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. 
 
 Ill 
 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
 
 1 8 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-born 
 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-born 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-born 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 
 course, 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 feature 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 born. 
 
 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-born 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 run away from 
 life." 
 
 It was not that love was lack- 
 ing; he was born 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- 
 born 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 born 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 BOOK 
 
 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- 
 born 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 liked, 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-born man," I 
 said, "she is not the only woman 
 who will deceive you!" 
 
 And I went away.
 
 Chapter II 
 How to Protect Yourself in the Family 
 
 I 
 
 YOU were born, I happen to 
 know, in a family. There 
 are few exceptions. It is 
 one of those universal and inex- 
 tricable situations for which the 
 popular imagination has found an 
 apt expression: 
 
 De quelque cote que je me tourne Je 
 vois la mile de Libourne. 
 
 And the family it is your town 
 
 of Libourne; and mine. You are 
 29
 
 30 THE EGO BOOK 
 
 born 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 natural 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 awful 
 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:"Hi!Rufus!" 
 
 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 3? 
 
 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. 
 
 1 ' 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, curiously like your 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 everywhere. 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'fly " 
 good; and you wondered whether 
 there was anyone inside her and 
 would 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 born 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 your 
 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 jumped 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 human 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 
 born, 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 your 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, lurked egos like your own, 
 shining and forthcoming and cou- 
 rageous. That was all.
 
 Chapter HI 
 
 How to Get the Better of Your Friends 
 and Enemies 
 
 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 
 sure 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 vita et im- 
 mortalitatis as though in friend- 
 ship there were the very elixir of 
 life and immortality. Now the 
 subtlest of modern 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 61 
 
 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 fora 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 likenesses exist when the 
 vital forces in Rufus vibrate in fair 
 harmony with yours there is no 
 power of circumstance can break 
 your 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 rebours. 
 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 commonness 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 full 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 BOOK 
 
 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 your 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- 
 docharney 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 rhythm, 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- 
 horn and checked and said: "Jove! 
 Murdocharney would enjoy this 
 sort of thing!" you had already 
 begun ; you were taking your pleas- 
 ure in terms of Murdocharney. 
 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 found 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 Murdocharney'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 
 Murdocharney 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 BOOK 
 
 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 BOOK 
 
 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 under- 
 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 81 
 
 of sympathetic understanding with 
 your 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. 
 
 IV 
 
 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- 
 
 6
 
 82 THE EGO BOOK 
 
 cms 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, born 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 
 
 Everywhere. 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 slim 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 BOOK 
 
 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 profound) 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.
 
 ioo 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 101 
 
 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 born 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 
 life? 
 
 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 born 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 
 born 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 burning 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.
 
 i io THE EGO BOOK 
 
 It was in Kathryn's destiny to hear 
 that call. 
 
 ' ' None of you understands 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 
 Norns 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 should 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.
 
 ii2 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 your 
 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 
 
 8
 
 ii4 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
 
 u8 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 You "Want? Also How 
 
 to Prevent Others From Taking 
 
 It Away From You 
 
 ("T ^OU have not said a word 
 
 Y 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 humanity. 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 like 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 should 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.
 
 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 corn 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 
 corner 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, like a 
 blind starling 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 
 penumbral 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 line 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 want oner. 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 
 
 "I 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."
 
 Chapter VI 
 The Hive and The Bee 
 
 I 
 
 TE emerging ego is born 
 into a city, a caste, a civil- 
 ization ; which is a strange 
 thing. And a stranger thing 
 every man is the sum-total of his 
 race. 
 
 (This does away with any feeling 
 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 innumerable 
 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
 
 i 4 6 THE EGO BOOK 
 
 civilization into which you and 
 your atoms are born. 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 HIVE 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 HIVE 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 human- 
 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 
 would 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 
 multitudinous 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 HIVE 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 anonymity. 
 
 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 human collectivity. Scien- 
 tifically. Immutably. The gov- 
 ernment, whether it was called 
 theocracy, monarchy, republic, or 
 empire, was always exactly fitted
 
 1 60 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 
 human 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 161 
 
 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 humanity 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
 
 162 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 life 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 AND THE BEE 163 
 
 imperious way, O Philemon for 
 you are scouting down the long 
 road where humanity must follow. 
 
 And not humanity alone. 
 
 Make the way straight, also, 
 for your brother, the field-mouse, 
 and your obscure cousin, the eel.
 
 Chapter VE 
 
 How to be Good to Yourself When Dead 
 I 
 
 PR, 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 human 
 rhythm is destroyed. So forever is 
 broken that human form of the 
 universal rhythm and the series of 
 things it accomplished. He Who 
 
 Was is reduced to insensible mole- 
 164
 
 GOODNESS 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
 
 1 66 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 until 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 Venus of
 
 1 68 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
 
 i;o 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 born with a 
 chimney-pot on his head, just as 
 another man is born 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, Catulle
 
 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 circum- 
 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 lives. 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 181 
 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 your 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
 
 182 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.
 
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