Our social self-seeking, in turn, is carried on directly through our amativeness and friendliness, ourdesire to please and attract notice and admiration, our emulation and jealousy, our love of glory, influence, andpower, and indirectly through whichever of the material self-seeking impulses prove serviceable as means to socialends. That the direct social self-seeking impulses are probably pure instincts is easily seen. The noteworthy thingabout the desire to be 'recognized' by others is that its strength has so little to do with the worth of therecognition computed in sensational or rational terms. We are crazy to get a visiting-list which shall be large, to beable to say when any one is mentioned, "Oh! I know him well," and to be bowed to in the street by half the people wemeet. Of course distinguished friends and admiring recognition are the most desirable - Thackeray somewhere asks hisreaders to confess whether it would not give each of them an exquisite pleasure to be met walking down PallMall with a duke on either arm. But in default of dukes and envious salutations almost anything will do for some of us;and there is a whole race of beings to-day whose passion is to keep their names in the newspapers, no matter under whatheading, 'arrivals and departures,' 'personal paragraphs,' 'interviews,' - gossip, even scandal, will suit them ifnothing better is to be had. Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is an example of the extremity to which this sort of cravingfor the notoriety of print may go in a pathological case. The newspapers bounded his mental horizon; and in the poorwretch's prayer on the scaffold, one of the most heartfelt expressions was: "The newspaper press of this land has a bigbill to settle with thee, O Lord!"
Revelling in the Confounding Glory of Not Being Dead: An Interview with Andrew W.K.
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