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Why I should have supposed that the Truth should have been disagreeable to Mrs. Jevons Heaven only knows. I suppose these scruples are the last illusions of our egoism. Still, I think that only an impudent egoist like Jevons could have carried off such an embarrassment with any brilliance. As it happened it was taken out of my hands.
I've caught glimpses of him disappearing around corners, but he dodges. I think he's a bit ashamed to meet me. That person is my old civilian self. What a full-blown egoist he used to be! How full of golden plans for his own advancement! How terrified of failure, of disease, of money losses, of death of all the temporary, external, non-essential things that have nothing to do with the spirit!
"What?" "Not to be an egoist in one's joy; not to be a craven in one's sorrow. You see, a great view suggests the world, the vastness of things, the multiplicity of life. I think that must be it. And of course it reminds one, too, that one will soon be going away." "Going away?" "Yes. 'The mountains will endure' but we !" "Oh, you mean death." "Yes.
It has a cramping effect; it closes the pores, intensifying one line of activity at the expense of all the others; often enough it encrusts the individual with a kind of shell, a veneer of something akin to hypocrisy. Your ordinary adult is an egoist in matters of the affections; a specialist in his own insignificant pursuit; a dull dog.
It is in the interest of human society that it should do so. It is rational, in the sense of the word everywhere used in this book. But the nations continue to exist, and they often cultivate selfishly national interests. So do families cultivate selfishly family interests. So does the egoist selfishly dig about and fertilize the number One.
Or it may be employed to illustrate a character: we are told of Clara Middleton, in "The Egoist," that she possesses the "art of dressing to suit the season and the sky"; and therefore the look of the atmosphere at any hour helps to convey to us a sense of her appearance.
It is heart-rending in its emotional intensity and almost faultless in expression. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, like most of Meredith's works, contains more than a love story. Many chapters of high-class comedy and epigrammatical wit serve to explode a fallacious educational theory. The Egoist has for its special aim the portrayal and exposure of masculine egotism.
During the fifteen years of the Restoration she had amused herself far too much to think of her son; but on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed to its extreme, might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible persons, who pardon everything to a good mother.
We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking and faithful God?
These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they communicate. I should never forgive myself if I forgot "The Egoist." Here is a Nathan for the modern David; here is a book to send the blood into men's faces.
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