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“If we seek a foundation for the edifice of exact science which is capable of withstanding every criticism, we must first of all tone down our demands considerably. … Now, then, among all the facts that we do know and can report to each other, which is the one that is absolutely the most certain, the one that is not open even to the most minute doubt? This question admits of but one answer: “That which we experience with our own body.’ And since exact science deals with the exploration of the outside world, we may immediately go on to say: ‘They are the impressions we receive in life from the outside world directly through our sense organs, the eyes, ears, etc. … If we call the sum total of sensory impressions ‘the sense world,” we may state briefly that exact science issues from the experienced sense world. 1)
Many have observed the importance of selfhood, but rarely if ever has anyone recognized its allness character for each of us and taken it as the only foundation for the understanding of human behavior. Even “wise” men think and speak many times from false outlook to once from true insight. There is a Persian saying, “‘Tis the same to him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were covered with leather,” and so it is the same with the outlook of a person who wears insight, namely, selfsameness. The basic rule encouraging autonomy is non-interference. Man's chief perfection consists in the extent of his awareness of his individuality. We need constant recurrence, hour after hour, to our source of inspiration, self-insight; drawing our strength from nature, our own human nature with which we can live in full communion.
Repressed selfishness eradicates all other vices but itself and thus gives the appearance of benevolence, misanthropy parading as philanthropy. There is this one disadvantage to blind charity for one's own otherness; it is