Even the most spiritual and highly cultivated of men habitually
sees the world and himself through the lenses of delusive formulas
and artless simplifications — and most of all himself.
For it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men
to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously
this illusion is shattered, it always mends again…
And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men
of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions,
so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion
of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up
of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once
the majority puts them under lock and key.
Every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree
a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms,
of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities.
It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing
for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity
and to speak of his ego as though it were a one-fold
and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon.
Even the best of us shares the delusion.
[These selves] form a unity and a supreme individuality;
and it is in this higher unity alone, not in the several characters,
that something of the true nature of the soul is revealed.
Love of one’s neighbor is not possible without love of oneself…
Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism,
and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.
~ Hermann Hesse
from Steppenwolf
with thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova