The Sacred Law of Self-Will

"There is one virtue that I love, and only one. I call it self-will. I cannot bring myself to think so highly of all the many virtues we read about in books and hear about from our teachers. True, all the virtues man has devised for himself might be subsumed under a single head: obedience. For self-will is also obedience. But all other virtues, the virtues that are so highly esteemed and praised, consist in obedience to man-made laws. A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I hold absolutely sacred - the law in himself, his own ‘will’."

Hermann Hesse from Self-will, 1919.