The Nature of Goodness

by George Herbert Palmer

A second objection strips off the glory of self-sacrifice and regards it as a sad necessity. While there is nothing in it to attract or be approved, the lamentable fact is that we are so crowded together and disposed to trample on one another that, partially to escape, we must each agree to abate something of our own in behalf of a neighbor's gain. We cannot each be all we would. It is a sign of our mean estate that again and again we need to cut off sections of what we count valuable in order to save any portion. Only by such compromises are we able to get along with one another. He who refuses them finds himself exposed to still greater loss. The hard conditions under which we live appear in the fact that such restraint is inevitable. I call self- sacrifice, therefore, a sad necessity.

This theory of sacrifice is urged by Hobbes and by the later moralists who follow his daring lead. It should be counted among the objections because, while it admits the fact of self-sacrifice, it denies its dignity.

IV

A third objection declares sacrifice to be needless. Its very appearance rests on a misconception. We mistakenly suppose that in abating our own for the sake of our neighbor's good, we lose. In reality this is our true mode of enlargement. The interests of the individual and society are not hostile or alien, but supplemental. Society is nothing but the larger individual; so that he alone realizes himself who enters most fully into social relations, making the well-being of society his own. This is plain enough when we study the working of a small and comprehensible portion of society. The child does not lose through identification with family life. That is his great means of realizing himself. To assume contrast and antagonism between family interest and the interest of the child is palpably unwarranted and untrue. Equally unwarranted is a similar assumption in the broader ranges of society. When we talk of sacrifice, we refer merely to the first stage and outer aspect of the act. Underneath, self-interest is guarded, the individual giving up his individuality only through obtaining a larger individuality still.

Such identity of interest between society and the individual the moralists of the eighteenth century are never tired of pointing out. If they are right, and the identity is complete, then sacrifice is abolished or is only a generous illusion. But these men never quite succeeded in persuading the English people of their doctrine, at least they never carried their thought fully over into the common mind.

V

That common mind has always thought of sacrifice in a widely different way, but in one which renders it still more incomprehensible. Self- sacrifice it regards as a glorious madness. Though the only act which ever forces us to bow in reverent awe, it is insolubly mysterious, irrational, crazy perhaps, but superb. For in it we do not deliberate. We hear a call, we shut our ears to prudence, and with courageous blindness as regards damage of our own, we hasten headlong to meet the needs of others. To reckon heroism, to count, up opposing gains and losses, balancing them one against another in order clear-sightedly to act, is to render heroism impossible. Into it there enters an element of insanity. The sacrificer must feel that he cares nothing for what is rational, but only for what is holy, for his duty. The rational and the holy,—in the mind of him who has not been disturbed by theoretic controversy these two stand in harsh antithesis, and the antithesis has been approved by important ethical writers of our time. The rational man is, of course, needed in the humdrum work of life. His assertive and sagacious spirit clears many a tangled pathway. But he gets no reverence, the characteristic response of self-sacrifice. This is reserved for him who says, "No prudence for me! I will he admirably crazy. Let me fling myself away, so only there come salvation to others."

Such, then, are the four massive objections: self-sacrifice is unreal psychologically, aesthetically, morally, or rationally: But negative considerations are not enough. No amount of demonstration of what a thing is not will ever reveal what it is. Objections are merely of value for clearing a field and marking the spots on which a structure cannot be reared. The serious task of erecting that structure somewhere still remains. To it I now address myself.

VI

What we need to consider first is the reality and wide range of self- sacrifice. The moment the term is mentioned there spring up before our minds certain typical examples of it. We see the soldier advancing toward the battlefield, to stake his life for a country in whose prosperity he may never share. We see the infant falling into the water, and the full-grown man flinging in after it his own assured and valued life in hopes of rescuing that incipient and uncertain thing, a little child. Yes, I myself came on a case of heroism hardly less striking. I was riding my bicycle along the public street when there dashed past me a runaway horse with a carriage at his heels, both moving so madly that I thought all the city was in danger. I pursued as rapidly as I could, and as I neared my home, saw horse and carriage standing by the sidewalk. By the horse's head stood a negro. I went up to him and said, "Did you catch that horse?" "Yes, sir," he answered. "But," I said, "he was going at a furious pace." "Yes, sir." "And he might have run you down." "Yes, sir, but I know horses, and I was afraid he would hurt some of these children." There he stood, the big brown hero, unexalted, soothing the still restive horse and unaware of having done anything out of the ordinary. I entered my house ashamed. Had I possessed such skill, would I have ventured my life in such a fashion?