I.e., a life lived entirely for the gratification of the self. He sees such a life as being "misdirected," and the narrator approves this as a "moral sentiment." But he has already rejected the alternative of a life lived for social ideals, leaving him no grounds on which to feel "remorse" or "regret." If (as the novel ever more forcefully suggests) the self is meant to exist within the framework of an ideal, and those ideals are illusory...