feeling of self-preservation

“And indeed, my boy, during these processes, they usually instinctively at first refrain from such an unnatural manifestation, but later when every one of them already in the environment of the process itself willy-nilly sees and becomes convinced that the destruction of the existence of those similar to themselves proceeds so simply, and that the number of the destroyed always grows and grows – well then, each of them involuntarily begins instinctively to feel and automatically to value his own existence And having become persuaded by his own eyes that the possibility of losing his own existence depends, at the given moment, absolutely only on the number of beings of the enemy side not destroyed, then in consequence of the strengthened functioning in his imagination of the presence of the impulse called ‘cowardice’, and on account of the impossibility at each moment of reasonable deliberation by his being-mentation, weakened already without this, he begins from a natural feeling of self-preservation to strive with all his Being to destroy as many as possible of the existences of the beings of the enemy side in order to have the greater chance of saving his own existence. And gradually progressing in this feeling of self-preservation of theirs, they then reach the state, as they themselves say, of ‘bestiality’. BTG XXXI

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