When one speaks of man’s right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational
self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to
sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that
to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man’s self-interest—which he
must selflessly renounce. The idea that man’s self-interest can be served only
by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those
humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve
the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as
the concept “rational” is omitted from the context of “values,” “desires,”
“self-interest” and ethics.