[533] are you a real person. But don't speak of self-love^a---I used that word only for a moment, and I don't know whether in the course of these lectures I already made this suggestion; if not, I do it now: The natural self-affirmation which Jesus (and the Old Testament) refers to when He says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." This is the natural self-affirmation which everybody has and which should not be called self-love. The second is that against which the preachers preach, namely self-love in the negative sense, which shouldn't be called so because it confuses the issues; it should be called selfishness. It shouldn't also be called self-centeredness, because self-centeredness is the greatness of man: he is a complete center. But this probably cannot be avoided any more. Then there is a third: we look at ourselves in the mirror of what we ought to be^b and because we are it essentially: then we discover that we have to reject ourselves. And if we are able, because of the power of love IN us, to accept ourselves in SPITE of our self-disgust and self-rejection, then we have what I would call the highest form of self-love^c, but I would not call it so; in order to

avoid confusion, let's call it self-acceptance.^d So instead of that in-itself-impossible and logically wrong and confusing word, "self-love," which must always be distinguished in the right and the wrong self-love, [we] have three words: self-affirmation, selfishness, and self-acceptance---self-affirmation, which is the necessary natural life process which we have in every moment, which we try to escape a [i.e. which we try to protect from) [sic.] danger, or in which we enjoy our being as living; secondly, selfishness, which neither affirms oneself nor the other one, but which is greedy and is always connected with self-disgust; and then the third, namely the self-acceptance IN SPITE of this self-disgust which is connected with selfishness---this form of love, of which Iam [sic.] speaking now. And now I say: this self-acceptance^e also enables us to accept the others, because it overcomes the greedy selfishness which makes the others into objects and means. If we have the principle of love^f, then we have a principle which has all richness of the world in itself, because EVERYthing is completely individualized and seeks and longs for