PREFACE
I here present the substance of eight Ely Lectures delivered in the spring of 1918 at Union Theological Seminary in New York. They were spoken without manuscript. In writing them out from the stenographer’s notes I have condensed them considerably. In these belligerent days publishers are disposed to economize paper and print, and readers to prize brevity in everything except newspapers. Such restrictions force on us loquacious bookmakers greater regard for compactness and lucidity, and are thus not altogether an injury.
The book seeks to call attention to a section of ethics in regard to which the public mind greatly needs clarifying. Altruism and egoism, socialism and individualism, are in our time sentimentally arrayed against one another as independent and antagonistic agencies, each having its partisans. A careful examination will show, I think, that the one has meaning only when in company with its supposed rival. I have thought to make this clearest by tracing three stages through which the altruistic impulse passes in every-day life, exhibiting their varying degrees of dignity and the helpful presence in all of them of egoistic balance. If through my notion of a conjunct self I have made this curious partnership plain I shall count it no mean contribution to our generous, sacrificial, self-assertive, and perplexed time.
George Herbert Palmer.
Cambridge, October 21, 1918.