This driver who sees in the horn a lovely American toy, and so never stops fondling it and playing with it as he speeds through the streets of the city, believing he has done his duty toward the pedestrians and the other vehicles... forgetting, or pretending to forget, how many of people's nerves he has crushed along the way, how many of their ears he has shattered, and how many a bed of sleep he has troubled and kept wakeful in the night...

This maid who shakes out the carpets in the early morning, while the city is still slumbering, and so hurls her bombs that rend the prevailing stillness and terrify the neighbors... or who throws the house sweepings from the balcony onto the street and onto whoever is in the street, then follows them with the rinsing water, reckoning all the while that she has done her duty in cleaning the house from which she earns her bread.

This neighbor who gives the radio set free rein by day or by night — and perhaps night and day — sending out upon his neighbors, on all three wavebands, waves of disturbance and annoyance, forcing them to hear music they do not like and news and talks they cannot bear, while he makes a show of being free in his own house and with his own set, and no one has any right to protest or grumble...

This young man who will not stand in line before the ticket window, but storms the window from the other side, believing he has done no more than take a bold step that has earned him the saving of a wait... or who raises his voice in the cinema, commenting on the film or chatting with a companion, and sometimes uttering things that wound the ears of virgin girls and chaste women...

This man who rolls out curses and foul language in the middle of the street or in the tramcar,

caring nothing whom the shrapnel of his abuse and the spray of his foulness may strike, so long as he is amusing himself and giving his spirit relief...

This passerby, or this shopkeeper, who throws his rubbish onto the roadside, delighted that he has spared himself the trouble of putting it in a special box or of walking as far as the refuse basket...

This man who takes pleasure in breaking the law — the traffic law, or the law of commerce, or the penal law — by slipping away from the men of the law; and if they take him by surprise, and he holds a high position, or is hitched to the wheel of a high position, he does not scruple to demean them, belittle them, and threaten them with punishment because they have dared to touch him in the name of the law.

All these and their like we are

accustomed to call selfish: people who care only for themselves and the gratification of their whims, heedless of others and with no regard for their feelings. The truth is that these are the shortest-sighted of all people in their selfishness, and the most undutiful toward their own selves.

Yes — for just as there is short-sightedness in politics, and in economics, and in the judging of many matters, so too in selfishness — yes, even in selfishness — there is short-sightedness. What is understood by selfishness is love of self and preference for it without regard for others; but on condition that this truly leads to the self's comfort, and to the selfish man's enjoyment of guaranteed privileges and advantages. It does not occur to us to defend selfishness, to promote it, and to teach people its principles... nor does it stand in need of that, for it is one of those instincts that no one has the power to repel. But selfishness, like the other instincts, is subject to development and refinement by polish and discipline. And it lies within the power of society — that is, of man's life among men — to change the forms of selfishness, if it does not change its essence. What is asked of the individual in