J. S. Mill fears that this would lead to endless self-reproaches and that these constant reproaches would embitter the life of each individual. This, however, is so little implied by the rule that it is easily demonstrable that such a result is excluded. Goethe well understood this,--
i.e. impatience in respect of one’s own imperfections, he says in one of his by no means lax sayings,--
--giving way to the stings of conscience, when fresh joyous resolve is alone available,--
“Jene vermehrt die Schuld, Diese schafft neue.”[A]
“Impatience naught avails Nor more availeth rue, One addeth to the fault, The other maketh new.”--Tr.
In an album I once found in the hand of the pious Abbot Haneberg, afterwards Bishop of Spires, the following lines, written to the same effect:--
“Sonne dich mit Lust an Gottes Huld, Hab’ mit allen--auch mit dir, Geduld.”[B]
“Bathe thyself with delight in the sunshine of heavenly grace, Let patience toward all men abound--e’en with thyself find a place.”--Tr.
[43] (_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.