benefit to himself, nay, sometimes, even to his own hurt. From the egoist's point of view the same difference is still large enough to make him bring much trouble on his neighbours, in order to obtain a small personal advantage. Hence for both of these, between the ego, which is limited to their own persons, and the non-ego, which includes all the rest of the world, there is fixed a great gulf, a mighty abyss: Pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim (the world may perish, provided I be safe), is their maxim.

For the good man, on the contrary, this distinction is by no means so pronounced; indeed, in the case of magnanimous deeds, it appears to become a vanishing quantity, because then the weal of another is advanced at the cost of the benefactor, the self of another placed on an equality with his own.