The laborer of such a type is not "egoistic," because he does not labor for individuals, neither for himself nor for other individuals, not for _private_ men therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does not ease individual pains, does not care for individual wants, but removes limits within which humanity is pressed, dispels prejudices which dominate an entire time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct the path of all, clears away errors in which men entangle themselves, discovers truths which are found through him for all and for all time; in short--he lives and labors for humanity.
Now, in the first place, the discoverer of a great truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the rest of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no enjoyment, he communicates it; but, even though he has the consciousness that his communication is highly valuable to the rest, yet he has in no wise sought and found his truth for the sake of the rest, but for his own sake, because he himself desired it, because darkness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured for himself light and enlightenment to the best of his powers.
He labors, therefore, for his own sake and for the satisfaction of _his_ want. That along with this he was also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take from his labor the _egoistic_ character.
In the next place, if he did labor only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be human, those of the rest unhuman, _i. e._ egoistic? Perhaps, because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is the labor of his whole being, because he has done his best in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman, _i. e._ the skill in handicraft, not "the man"? In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man."
But does this mean more than "in the one work you see _me_ as completely as possible, in the other only my skill"? Is it not _me_ again that the act expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer _oneself_ to the world in a work, to work out and shape _oneself_, than to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman,--that he does not understand how to compress himself into one labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a--theoretical want.