This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... VIII THE FEW AND THE MANY I. Introduction. Egoism and Fellow-Feeling 'HE kernel of the history of human develop 1 ment is the interaction of egoism and fellow-feeling. At certain periods egoism has been the stronger. The mere mention of the words "Hellenism," "Renaissance," calls up a vision of godlike figures passing in procession and filling the air with sound and colour. These periods have permanently enriched life by their profound, self-centred sense of life and surging creative joy. At other periods fellow-feeling has been predominant. Not the good fortune of the individual, but the sufferings of the many, have occupied the minds of thinkers. Periods of powerful conflict arise, when both egoism and fellow-feeling have found forcible expression. Our time is one of these. On the one hand we have a Tolstoy, whose fellow-feeling led him to a remedy for human suffering which in its extreme is an annihilation of individuality, as in the Buddhist ideal of Nirvana. Even the remnant of individualism preserved by Christianity, namely the hope of salvation, is of no importance to Tolstoy. He only desires the establishment of that kingdom of God upon earth which was preached by the prophets of Israel and by Christianity. And he believes that this kingdom can be reached by a full realisation of the doctrine of Jesus, with a selflessness so complete that it finally results in the extinction of the race, and by a return to primitive conditions so thorough that it finally results in the destruction of civilisation. In his condemnation of the State and of laws Tolstoy is in complete agreement with anarchism, whose temporary weapon, violence, he, however, unconditionally abhors. Anarchism also had dreams of the millennium, but dreams of a more...