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Title: The Egoist Author: Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Date: June 1, 1887 Language: en Topics: egoist, egoism, Freedom Press, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1 -- No. 9, retrieved on September 3, 2019, from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=2982. Notes: Freedom Press, London
He possessed everything necessary to render him the scourge of his
family.
He came into the world healthy and rich-and healthy and rich he remained
during the whole of his long life. No offense was ever brought home to
him; he committed no fault whatever either in word or in deed.
He was of stainless character. And proud in the consciousness of his
character, he pressed with it every one to earth--relations, friends,
acquaintances.
His character was to him capital. And with this capital he dealt at
usurious interest.
This character gave him the right to be pitiless, and to do nothing
beyond the good ordained by law.
And pitiless he was, and did no good. For benevolence prescribed by law
is not benevolence.
He never paid the slightest regard to any but his own so perfect person;
and he became seriously angry when others were not equally zealous in
caring for him.
However, he did not regard himself as an Egoist; and there was nothing
he more bitterly condemned and pursued than egoism and egoists. And this
was natural, for the egoism of others stood in the way of his own.
Knowing himself to be free from the slightest weakness, he could neither
understand nor tolerate the weakness of others. Indeed, he understood
nothing and no one, for on all sides, above and below, in front and
behind, he was surrounded by his own personality.
He did not even understand what it was to forgive. To himself be had
forgiven nothing; why should he need to forgive another?
Before the judgment-seat of his own conscience, before the countenance
of his own god, this miracle, this monster of virtue, raised his eyes
towards heaven, and with firm, clear voice exclaimed "Yes, verily, I am
a worthy and a moral man."
These words he will repeat on his dying bed; and even in the supreme
moment nothing will be affected in that heart of stone--in that heart
without fault or stain.
0 vileness of self-conscious unbending, cheaply-bought virtue? Art thou
not more hateful than the open vileness of vise?
Translated from Tourgenieff's Prose Poems.