Sentence:  The preposterous altruism too!...Resist not evil. It is an insane immolation of <WSD>self</WSD>—as bad intrinsically as fakirs stabbing themselves or anchorites warping their spines in caves scarcely large enough for a fair-sized dog. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An individual person as the object of his own reflective consciousness (plural selves).