Note 43 — CONTENTS

(p. 28). It is necessary to be on one’s guard against drawing from the principle of love of our neighbour the conclusion that each has to care for every other individual in the same degree as for himself, which, far from conducing towards the universal good, would rather essentially prejudice it. This is seen by reflecting on the circumstance that to ourselves we stand in a position different from that in which we stand to everybody else, while again in respect of these others we are in a position to help, or to injure, one more, the other less. If there are human beings in Mars the inhabitants of the earth can and ought to wish them good also, not however to strive after their good in the same manner as for himself and his fellow-men.

It is in this connexion that the injunction to take thought in the first instance for oneself, a precept to be found in every system of morality, is justifiable: “γνῷθι σαυτόν,” “Sweep before your own doorstep,” etc. The demand to seek first of all the welfare of wife and child, home and fatherland, is also universal. The command: “Take no thought for the morrow,” in the sense in which it really offers wise counsel, also flows as a result from the same source. That my future happiness ought not to be so dear to me as my present happiness is not here implied.

So regarded, the communistic doctrines which illogical impetuosity would seek to derive from the lofty principle of universal brotherhood are shown to be unjustifiable.