Open a dictionary and search for words indicating how the belief in the necessity of emancipating life from the dominion of self has been woven into the very texture of the English language. Egotism, which originally meant the excessive use of the pronoun I, has come to signify all kinds of self-praise, self-exaltation, and to include all manner of parading one’s virtues and excellencies; egoism denotes a state of mind in which the feelings are concentrated on self. Vanity and self-conceit are two words closely allied to the natural selfishness of the human heart. The former indicates the feeling which springs from the thought that we are highly esteemed by others; the latter is an overweening opinion of one’s talents, capacities, and importance. There is another list of compound words, like self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, which point to the importance of eliminating self and thoughts of self from the soul’s activities in thinking and willing. Virtues like humility, love, service, sacrifice, are lauded in every Christian land. They are the Christian virtues exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, who lived to do good to others, and who died that the sinning, sorrowing millions on earth might find peace and consolation for their troubled souls.
The unselfing of the will depends as much upon right thinking as does the unsensing of the mind. The untrained mind deals too much with things near at hand in the objective world; the uneducated will deals too much with the thing nearest to every man in the subjective world,—the individual self. The thought of self may enter so thoroughly into the feelings and activities of the soul that the rights of others are never thought of in the gratification of self and in the efforts at self-aggrandizement and self-glorification. Selfish desire and selfish ambition may dominate the soul and cause the individual to trample upon the dearest rights of others. The millions which some men heap up are squeezed from the productive toil of thousands, perhaps millions, of human hands. Colossal fortunes can seldom be made without reducing a considerable number of human beings to a condition of living from hand to mouth, to a state of chronic poverty. That the inordinate ambition of a masterful politician may be gratified, the hopes of other aspirants must be frustrated and their rights must be trampled upon. Hence in the end there is little happiness among office-holders and office-seekers. The selfishness of great conquerors is still more inexcusable. In the effort to gratify an unholy ambition the lives of thousands are sacrificed, their blood is spilt upon the battle-field, and their health is undermined by suffering and disease. If the men who send the soldier to the front were themselves compelled to sleep in ditches, or to expose themselves to the fire of machine-guns upon the open field, wars would not be declared, or, if declared, would soon cease.