EGMONT

egmont, earls of. john perceval, 1st earl of egmont (1683-1748), irish politician, and partner with j. e. oglethorpe in founding the american colony of georgia, was created earl in 1733. he claimed descent from the egmonts of flanders, but his title was taken from the place in county cork where the family residence stood. its name of burton house, and that of burton manor which formed part of the family estates, were a reminiscence of burton in somerset, where was the earlier english family property of his great-great-grandfather richard perceval (1550-1620), burghley's secret agent, and author of a spanish dictionary published in 1591, whose son sir philip perceval (1605-1647) acquired the irish estates by judicious use of his opportunities as commissioner for land titles and of his interest at court. sir philip's son john, grandfather of the 1st earl, was made a baronet in 1661. the first earl of egmont (who had been made baron perceval in 1715, and viscount perceval in 1723) is chiefly important for his connexion with the colonization of georgia, and for his voluminous letters and writings on biography and genealogy. john perceval, 2nd earl of egmont (1711-1770), his eldest son, was an active politician, first lord of the admiralty (1763-1766), and political pamphleteer, and like his father an ardent genealogist. he was twice married, and had eight sons and eight daughters. one of his younger sons was spencer perceval, prime minister of england. his eldest son succeeded as 3rd earl, and the eldest by his second marriage (with catherine compton, baroness of arden in ireland) was in 1802 created baron arden of the united kingdom, a title which subsequently became merged in the egmont earldom. egmont (egmond), lamoral, count of, prince of gavre (1522-1568), was born in hainaut in 1522. he was the younger of the two sons of john iv., count of egmont, by his wife francoise of luxemburg, princess of gavre. on the death of his elder brother charles, about 1541, he succeeded to his titles and estates. in this year he served his apprenticeship as a soldier in the expedition of the emperor charles v. to algiers, distinguishing himself in the command of a body of cavalry. in 1544 he married sabina, sister of the elector palatine frederick iii., and the wedding was celebrated at spires with great pomp in the presence of the emperor and his brother ferdinand, afterwards emperor. created knight of the golden fleece in 1546, he accompanied philip of spain in his tour through the netherland towns, and in 1554 he went to england at the head of a special embassy to ask the hand of mary of england for philip, and was afterwards present at the wedding ceremony at winchester. in the summer of 1557 egmont was appointed commander of the flemish cavalry in the war between spain and france; and it was by his vehement persuasion that the battle of st quentin was fought. the victory was determined by the brilliant charge that he led against the french. the reputation which he won at st quentin was raised still higher in 1558, when he encountered the french army under de thermes at gravelines, on its march homewards after the invasion of flanders, totally defeated it, and took marshal de thermes prisoner. the battle was fought against the advice of the duke of alva, and the victory made alva egmont's enemy. but the count now became the idol of his countrymen, who looked upon him as the saviour of flanders from the devastations of the french. he was nominated by philip stadtholder of flanders and artois. at the conclusion of the war by the treaty of cateau cambresis, egmont was one of the four hostages selected by the king of france as pledges for its execution. the attempt made by king philip to convert the netherlands into a spanish dependency and to govern it by spanish ministers excited the resentment of egmont and other leading members of the netherlands aristocracy. between him and cardinal granvella, the all-powerful minister of the regent margaret of parma, there was no love lost. as a member of the council of state egmont joined the prince of orange in a vigorous protest addressed to philip (1561) against the autocratic proceedings of the minister; and two years later he again protested in conjunction with the prince of orange and count horn. in the spring of 1564 granvella left the netherlands, and the malcontent nobles once more took their places in the council of state. the resolve, however, of philip to enforce the decrees of the council of trent throughout the netherlands once more aroused their resentment. although himself a good catholic, egmont had no wish to see the spanish inquisition established in his native country. orange, egmont and others were convinced that the enforcement of the decrees in the netherlands was impossible, and, in january 1665, egmont accepted a special mission to spain to make known to philip the state of affairs and the disposition of the people. at madrid the king gave him an ostentatiously cordial reception, and all the courtiers vied with one another in lavishing professions of respect upon him. they knew his vain and somewhat unstable character, and hoped to win him over without conceding anything to the wishes of the netherlanders. the king gave him plenty of flatteries and promises, but steadily evaded any serious discussion of the object of his mission, and egmont finally returned home without having accomplished anything. at the same time philip sent further instructions to the regent to abate nothing of the severity of the persecution. egmont was naturally indignant at the treatment he had received, while the terrors of the inquisition were steadily rousing the people to a state of frenzied excitement. in 1566 a confederacy of the lesser nobility was formed (_les gueux_) whose principles were set out in a document known as the compromise. from this league egmont held aloof; he declined to take any step savouring of actual disloyalty to his sovereign. he withdrew to his government of flanders, and as stadtholder took active measures for the persecution of heretics. but in the eyes of philip he had long been a marked man. the spanish king had temporized only until the moment arrived when he could crush opposition by force. in the summer of 1567 the duke of alva was despatched to the netherlands at the head of an army of veterans to supersede the regent margaret and restore order in the discontented provinces. orange fled to germany after having vainly warned egmont and horn of the dangers that threatened them. alva was at pains to lull their suspicions, and then suddenly seized them both and threw them in the castle of ghent. their trial was a farce, for their fate had already been determined before alva left spain. after some months of imprisonment they were removed to brussels, where sentence was pronounced upon them (june 4) by the infamous council of blood erected by alva. they were condemned to death for high treason. it was in vain that the most earnest intercessions were made in behalf of egmont by the emperor maximilian, by the knights of the order of the golden fleece, by the states of brabant, and by several of the german princes. vain, too, was the pathetic pleading of his wife, who with her eleven children was reduced to want, and had taken refuge in a convent. egmont was beheaded at brussels in the square before the town hall on the day after his sentence had been publicly pronounced (june 5, 1568). he met his fate with calm resignation; and in the storm of terror and exasperation to which this tragedy gave rise egmont's failings were forgotten, and he and his fellow-victim to spanish tyranny were glorified in the popular imagination as martyrs of flemish freedom. from this memorable event, which goethe made the theme of his play _egmont_ (1788), is usually dated the beginning of the famous revolt of the netherlands. in 1865 a monument to counts egmont and horn, by fraiken, was erected on the spot where they were beheaded. bibliography.--t. juste, _le comte d'egmont et le comte de hornes_ (brussels, 1862), _les pays-bas sous philippe ii_, 1555-1565 (2 vols., brussels, 1855); j. l. motley, _rise of the dutch republic_, 1555-1584 (3 vols., london, 1856); j. p. blok, _history of the people of the netherlands_ (tr. from dutch), vol. iii. (new york, 1900); r. fruin, _het voorspel van den tastigjarigen oorlag_ (amsterdam, 1866); e. marx, _studien zur geschichte des niederlandischen aufstandes_ (leipzig, 1902). (g. e.) egoism (from gr. and lat. _ego_, i, the 1st personal pronoun), a modern philosophical term used generally, in opposition to "altruism," for any ethical system in which the happiness or the good of the individual is the main criterion of moral action. another form of the word, "egotism," is really interchangeable, though in ordinary language it is often used specially (and similarly "egoism," as in george meredith's _egoist_) to describe the habit of magnifying one's self and one's achievements, or regarding all things from a selfish point of view. both these ideas derive from the original meaning of _ego_, myself, as opposed to everything which is outside myself. this antithesis of ego and non-ego, self and not-self, may be understood in several senses according to the connexion in which it is used. thus the self may be held to include one's family, property, business, and an indefinitely wider range of persons or objects in which the individual's interest is for the moment centred, i.e. everything which i can call "mine." in this, its widest, sense "a man's self is the sum total of all that he _can_ call his" (wm. james, _principles of psychology_, chap x.). this self may be divided up in many ways according to the various forms in which it may be expressed. thus james (ibid.) classifies the various "selves" as the material, the spiritual, the social and the "pure." or again the self may be narrowed down to a man's own person, consisting of an individual mind and body. in the true philosophical sense, however, the conception of the ego is still further narrowed down to the individual consciousness as opposed to all that is outside it, i.e. can be its object. this conception of the self belongs mainly to metaphysics and involves the whole problem of the relation between subject and object, the nature of reality, and the possibility of knowledge of self and of object. the ordinary idea of the self as a physical entity, obviously separate from others, takes no account of the problem as to how and in what sense the individual is conscious of himself; what is the relation between subject and object in the phenomenon of self-consciousness, in which the mind reflects upon itself both past and present? the mind is in this case both subject and object, or, as william james puts it, both "i" and "me." the phenomenon has been described in various ways by different thinkers. thus kant distinguished the two selves as rational and empirical, just as he distinguished the two egos as the noumenal or real and the phenomenal from the metaphysical standpoint. a similar distinction is made by herbart. others have held that the self has a complex content, the subject self being, as it were, a fuller expression of the object-self (so bradley); or again the subject self is the active content of the mind, and the object self the passive content which for the moment is exciting the attention. the most satisfactory and also the most general view is that consciousness is complex and unanalysable. the relation of the self to the not-self need not to be treated here (see metaphysics). it may, however, be pointed out that in so far as an object is cognized by the mind, it becomes in a sense part of the complex self-content. in this sense the individual is in himself his own universe, his whole existence being, in other words, the sum total of his psychic relations, and nothing else being _for him_ in existence at all. a similar idea is prominent in many philosophico-religious systems wherein the idea of god or the infinite is, as it were, the union of the ego and the non-ego, of subject and object. the self of man is regarded as having limitations, whereas the godhead is infinite and all-inclusive. in many mystical oriental religions the perfection of the human self is absorption in the infinite, as a ripple dies away on the surface of water. the problems of the self may be summed up as follows. the psychologist investigates the ideal construction of the self, i.e. the way in which the conception of the self arises, the different aspects or contents of the self and the relation of the subject to the object self. at this point the epistemologist takes up the question of empirical knowledge and considers the kind of validity, if any, which it can possess. what existence has the known object for the knowing subject? the result of this inquiry is generally intellectual scepticism in a greater or less degree, namely, that the object has no existence for the knower except a relative one, i.e. in so far as it is "known" (see relativity of knowledge). finally the metaphysician, and in another sphere the theologian, consider the nature of the pure or transcendental self apart from its relations, i.e. the absolute self. in ethics, egoistic doctrines disregard the ultimate problems of selfhood, and assume the self to consist of a man's person and those things in which he is or ought to be directly interested. the general statement that such doctrines refer all moral action to criteria of the individual's happiness, preservation, moral perfection, raises an obvious difficulty. egoism merely asserts that the self is all-important in the application of moral principles, and does not in any way supply the material of these principles. it is a purely formal direction, and as such merely an adjunct to a substantive ethical criterion. a practical theory of ethics seeks to establish a particular moral ideal; if it is an absolute criterion, then the altruist would place first the attainment of that ideal by others, while the egoist would seek it for himself. the same is true of ethical theories which may be described as material. of the second type are those, e.g. of hobbes and spinoza, which advocate self-preservation as the ideal, as contrasted with modern evolutionist moralists who advocate race-preservation. again, we may contrast the early greek hedonists, who bade each man seek the greatest happiness (of whatever kind), with modern utilitarian and social hedonists, who prefer the greatest good or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. it is with hedonistic and other empirical theories that egoism is generally associated. as a matter of fact, however, egoism has been no less prominent in intuitional ethics. thus the man who seeks only or primarily his own moral perfection is an egoist par excellence. such are ascetics, hermits and the like, whose whole object is the realization of their highest selves. the distinction of egoistical and altruistic action is further complicated by two facts. in the first place, many systems combine the two. thus christian ethics may be said to insist equally on duty to self and duty to others, while crudely egoistic systems become unworkable if a man renders himself obnoxious to his fellows. on the other hand, every deliberate action based on an avowedly altruistic principle necessarily has a reference to the agent; if it is right that a should do a certain action for the benefit of b, then it tends to the moral self-realization of a that he should do it. upon whatsoever principle the rightness of an action depends, its performance is right _for the agent_. the self-reference is inevitable in every action in so far as it is regarded as voluntary and chosen as being of a particular moral quality. it is this latter fact which has led many students of human character to state that men do in fact aim at the gratification of their personal desires and impulses. the laws of the state and the various rules of conduct laid down by religion or morality are merely devices adopted for general convenience. the most remarkable statement of this point of view is that of friedrich nietzsche, who went so far as to denounce all forms of self-denial as cowardice:--let every one who is strong seek to make himself dominant at the expense of the weak.