Roman Emperors Selfishness

The thoroughly selfish man aims at obtaining as much hap­piness as he can for himself and does not care whether other People are happy or miserable. In order to attain this object, he tries to appropriate as large a share as possible of the good things of this world.

Whenever he has as opportunity of doing so he enjoys himself, even when his enjoyment is obtained at the expense of his fellow-men.

History gives many conspicuous instances of selfishness in the case of despotic monarchs taught by their flatterers to think that they had nothing else to do in the world but seek the gratification of their appetites.

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Thus we find among the Roman emperors men who valued their immense power chiefly because it gave them the command of all the

All over the world we find the selfish taking an unfair share of everything, and trying their best to use others as means to the attainment of their pleasure.

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They seem to be quite blind to the fact that by their course of life they must infallibly sacrifice their general happiness for the sake of a limited number of not very valuable pleasures. It is quite possible that a selfish man may by cunning or determination induce his friends and relations to sacrifice their interests to his.

It sometimes happens that there is in a family a notoriously selfish person, who makes himself or herself intensely disagreeable if crossed in any way.

Such disagreeable persons often get their own desires gratified at the expense of the more amiable mem­bers of the family, who are known to be unselfish and not ex­pected to resent any wrong done to them.

But in the long run they defeat their own object, and find that by exclusive attention to their own happiness they have deprived themselves of the highest and most permanent sources of happiness.