Topical Guide 522
Mark Dorset
Self-Sacrifice versus Self-Indulgence
Self-Congratulation
Being of Two Minds
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 5:
HE WALKS down the steps and across the sidewalk to the waiting cab, still savoring his nobility. He’s working awfully hard at ignoring BW, but he can hear his voice in the back of his mind, telling him that he has been a sap, […].
Matthew begins striding toward home, seething. Suddenly, he stops.
Why go home? What’s the point of going home? Why be a good man if you’re perceived as a bad one? he asks himself. Why be a sap? If Leila was teasing me, why not call her bluff?
Right! says BW. If she’s curious about what it would be like to make love to her mother’s lover, why not satisfy her curiosity?
Why not satisfy my own?
Why not, if it comes to that, just please yourself?
Denis Diderot, in Lettre à Landois, June 29, 1756, published in Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire, July 1, 1756 (from the Site
Je suis entre deux puissances dont l’une me montre le bien et l’autre m’incline vers le mal. Il faut prendre parti. Dans les commencements le moment du combat est cruel, mais la peine s’affaiblit avec le temps; il en vient un où le sacrifice de la passion ne coûte plus rien; je puis même assurer par expérience qu’il est doux: on en prend à ses propres yeux tant de grandeur et de dignité! La vertu est une maîtresse à laquelle on s’attache autant par ce qu’on fait pour elle que par les charmes qu’on lui croit. Malheur à vous si la pratique du bien ne vous est pas assez familière, et si vous n’êtes pas assez en fonds de bonnes actions pour en être vain, pour vous en complimenter sans cesse, pour vous enivrer de cette vapeur et pour en être fanatique. […]
Qu’est-ce qu’un homme vertueux ? C’est un homme vain de cette espèce de vanité, et rien de plus. Tout ce que nous faisons, c’est pour nous : nous avons lair de nous sacrifier, lorsque nous ne faisons que nous satisfaire.
Google translation, lightly edited by me, MD:
I am between two powers, one of which shows me the good and the other inclines me towards evil. One has to take sides. In the beginning the combat is cruel, but the pain weakens with time; there comes a point where the sacrifice of passion no longer costs anything; I can even assure you from experience that it is gentle: one takes so much grandeur and dignity from it in one’s own eyes! Virtue is a mistress to whom we attach ourselves as much by what we do for her as by the charms that we believe she possesses. Woe to you if the practice of good is not familiar enough to you, and if you are not sufficiently invested in good deeds to be vain, to compliment yourself on them constantly, to get drunk on this vapor and to become a fanatic.
What is a virtuous man? He is a vain man whose vanity is of that type, and nothing more. Everything we do is for ourselves: we seem to be sacrificing ourselves when we are only satisfying ourselves.
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