When presented with a situation where he stands to benefit from traditional procedures, he is willing to support them, even though he maintains a stance in support of social mobility as a new man' of the Renaissance when talking about man's right to self-determinism - "Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners-. This fluidity in his stance on practicality as a trait shows the extent of his duplicity even in relation to his own beliefs, which are moulded to fit the requirements of the situation and show his motives to be inconstant and uncertain.
This stance on self-determinism shows that he believes the animal instinct of self-preservation to be more important than manufactured ideals, and that the only way for a man to be true to himself is to put his own satisfaction above the happiness of others. This attitude is presented most prominently in the line "Since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found a man that knew how to love himself-, which also suggests that he mistrusts the rest of humanity for its inability to realise that human ideals are only hindering life's potential fruits', and that he exploits such idealists simply because he can; as he says of Othello, "He holds me well; The better shall my purpose work on him-. This lack of trust in civilisation also emerges in another of his supposed motives, that of his wife's infidelity; in the line "I, for mere suspicion of that kind, Will do as if for surety- he maintains that his retributive desires are caused by a mere rumour, and that his schemes are based simply on assumptions of her fallibility. For all of Iago's claims of superiority over those who allow themselves to be ruled by self-destructive passion, there are some elements of the imagery he uses that suggest that he, too, is controlled by a reckless sense of pride and jealousy.
