2TWO WAYS WITH THE SELFSELF-RENUNCIATION IS THOUGHT TO BE, AND INDEED IS, very near the core of Christian ethics. When A
2
TWO WAYS WITH THE SELF
SELF-RENUNCIATION IS THOUGHT TO BE, AND INDEED IS, very near the core of Christian ethics. When Aristotle writes in praise of a certain kind of self-love, we may feel, despite the careful distinctions which he draws between the legitimate and the illegitimate Philautia,'
that here we strike something essentially sub-Christian. It is more difficult, however, to decide what we think of St Francois de Sales's chapter, De la douceur envers nous-mesmes,'
where we are forbidden to indulge resentment even against ourselves and advised to reprove even our own faults avec des remonstrances douces et tranquil/es,3
feeling more compassion than passion. In the same spirit, Lady Julian of Norwich would have us `loving and peaceable', not only to our `even-Christians', but to `ourself'.'
Even the New Testament bids me love my neighbour `as myself" 5
which would be a horrible command if the self were simply to be hated. Yet Our Lord also says that a true disciple must `hate his own life'.'
kinds of self-hatred which look rather alike in their earlier stages, but of which one is wrong from the beginning and the other right to the end. When Shelley speaks of self-contempt as the source of cruelty, or when a later poet says that he has no stomach for the man `who loathes his neighbour as himself', they are referring to a very real and very un-Christian hatred of the self which may make diabolical a man whom common selfishness would have have left (at least, for a while) merely animal. The hard-boiled economist or psychologist of our own day, recognizing the `ideological taint' or Freudian motive in his own make-up, does not necessarily learn Christian humility. He may end in what is called a `low view' of all souls, including his own, which expresses itself in cynicism or cruelty, or both. Even Christians, if they accept in certain forms the doctrine of total depravity, are not always free from the danger. The logical conclusion of the process is the worship of suffering - for others as well as for the self - which we see, if I read it aright, in Mr David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, or that extraordinary vacancy which Shakespeare depicts at the end of Richard III. Richard in his agony tries to turn to self-love. But he has been `seeing through' all emotions so long that he `sees through' even this. It becomes a mere tautology: `Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.'7
value of the particular self called fne; then, wounded in its pride to find that such a darling object should be so disappointing, it seeks revenge, first upon that self, then on all. Deeply egoistic, but now with an inverted egoism, it uses the revealing argument, `I don't spare myself' - with the implication 'then a fortiori I need not spare others' - and becomes like the centurion in Tacitus, immtlitior quid toleraverat.s