“The most sublime act is to set another before you.”William Blake · Căsătoria Cerului cu Infernul · 1793 · Argumentul
Greatness begins where the ego stops being the center of the world.
Blake writes from a mystical perspective in which the ego is the prison of the soul. The mechanism is inversion: everything great in a person begins when they stop being the center of the world; setting another before yourself is not humiliation but an opening toward the infinite. A parent who gives up a dreamed career to support a child, or a friend who listens all night to another's pain, performs exactly this sublime act.
Why it matters It offers a measure of greatness other than personal success: useful when ego and care for another come into conflict.