WHAT IS MAN?
I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old
Man had asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and
nothing more. The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into
particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.]
[snip great stuff]
We (mankind) have ticketed ourselves
with a number of qualities to which we have given misleading
names. Love, Hate, Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence,
and so on. I mean we attach misleading MEANINGS to the names.
They are all forms of self-contentment, self-gratification, but
the names so disguise them that they distract our attention from
the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the dictionary which
ought not to be there at all--Self-Sacrifice. It describes a
thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and
never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's
every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval,
in every emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we
are. It is our breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only
spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling power; we have no
other. Without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no
one would do anything, there would be no progress, the world
would stand still. We ought to stand reverently uncovered when
the name of that stupendous power is uttered.
[snip more great stuff]
