You are to benefit _yourself_, and yet you are not seek _your_ benefit.
People regard as unselfish the _benefactor_ of men, a Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also the _fanatic_ who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices everything to virtue,--like Koerner, dies for God, king, and fatherland. Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily separate him from his adherents.
Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another _end_ than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that _his_ end; selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to _others too_, and so would be for the _common_ interest.
Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be _our_ end and our _property_, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a--fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it passes into our _stubbornness_ and becomes our--master. One is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes so in the case of a _sacred_ end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.--
I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my _own_, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its _judge_, because I am its owner.