Too easily does our sympathetic and sentimental age, recklessly eulogistic of altruism, hurry into self-sacrifice. Altruism in itself is worthless. That an act is unselfish can never justify its performance. He who would be a great giver must first be a great person. Our men, and still more our women, need as urgently the gospel of self-development as that of self-sacrifice; though the two are naturally supplemental. Our only means of estimating the propriety and dignity of sacrifice is to inquire how closely connected with ourselves is its object. Until we can justify this connection, we have no right to incur it, for genuine sacrifice is always an act of self- assertion. In saving his regiment and contributing his share toward saving his country, the soldier asserts his own interests. He is a good soldier in proportion as he feels these interests to be his; while the deserter is condemned, not for refusing to give his life to an alien country and regiment, but because he was small enough to imagine that these great constituents of himself were alien. I tell the man on the street the way home because I cannot part his bewilderment from my own. The problem always is, What may I suitably regard as mine? And in solving it, we should study as carefully that for which we propose to sacrifice ourselves as anything which we might seek to obtain. Triviality or lack of permanent consequence is as objectionable in the one case as in the other. The only safe rule is that self-sacrifice is self-assertion, is a judgment as regards what we would welcome to be a portion of our conjunct self.
Perhaps an extreme case will show this most clearly. Jesus prayed, "Not my will, but thine, be done." He did not then lose his will. He asserted and obtained it. For his will was that the divine will should be fulfilled, and fulfilled it was. He set aside one form of his will, his private and isolated will, knowing it to be delusive. But his true or conjunct will—and he knew it to be his true one—he abundantly obtained. It is no wonder, then, that in explaining these things to his disciples he says, "My meat it is to do the will of my Father." That is always the language of genuine self-sacrifice. The act is not complete until the sense of loss has disappeared.
XI
Yet while I hold that self-sacrifice is thus the very extreme of rationality, grounding as it does all worth in the relational or conjunct selfhood, I cannot disguise from myself that it contains an element of tragedy too. This my readers will already have felt and will have begun to rebel against my insistence that self-sacrifice is the fulfillment of our being. For though it is true that when opposition arises between the conjunct and separate selves our largest safety is with the former, the very fact that such opposition is possible involves tragedy. One part of the nature becomes arrayed against another. We must die to live. Our lower goods are found incompatible with our higher. Pleasure, comfort, property, friends, possibly life itself, have become hostile to our more inclusive aims and must be cast aside. It is true that when the tragic antithesis is presented and we can reach our higher goods only by loss of the lower, hesitation is ruin. It is true too that on account of that element of self-assertion to which I have drawn, attention, the genuine sacrificer is ordinarily unaware of any such tragedy. But none the less tragedy is there. To suppose it absent would strip sacrifice of what we regard as most characteristic.
Nor can we pause here. Those who would call self-sacrifice a glorious madness have still further justification. A leap into the dark we must at least admit it to be, For trace it rationally as far as we may, there always remains uncertainty at the close. There is, for example, uncertainty about ultimate results. The mother toiling for her child, and neglecting for its sake most of what would render her own life rich, can never know that this child will grow up to power. The day may come when she will wish it had died in childhood. The glory of her action is bound up with this darkness. Were the soldier, marching to the field, sure that his side would be victorious, he would be only half a hero. The consequences of self-sacrifice can never be certain, foreseen, calculable. There must be risk. Omit it, and the sacrifice disappears. Indeed nothing in life which calls forth high admiration is free from this touch of faith and courage, this movement into the unknown. It is at the very heart of self-sacrifice.
But besides the unknown character of the result there is usually uncertainty as regards the cost. The sacrificer does not give according to measure. I do not say I will attend to this sick person up to such and such a point, but when that point is reached I shall have done enough. This would hardly be self-sacrifice. I rather say, "Here I am. Take me, use me to the full, spend of me whatever you need. How much that will be, I do not know." So there is an element of darkness in ourselves.
And possibly I ought to mention a third variety of these incalculabilities of sacrifice. We do not plan the case. A while ago, meeting a literary man whose product is of much consequence to the community and himself, I asked him how his book was coming on. "Badly," he answered. "Just now an aged relative has fallen ill. There is no other place where she can be properly disposed, and so she has been brought to my house. I must care for her, my home will be much broken up, and my work must be set aside." I said, "Is that your duty? Have you not a more important obligation to your book?" But he answered, "One cannot choose a duty." I did not fully agree. I think we should carefully weigh duties, even if we do not choose them. Morality would otherwise become the sport of accident. But I perceive that in the last analysis no duty is made by ourselves. It is given us by something more authoritative than we, something which we cannot alter, fully estimate, or without damage evade. Necessity is laid upon us, sometimes an invading necessity. We are walking our well-ordered path, pursuing some dear aims, when harsh before us stands a waiting duty, bidding us lay aside that in which we are engaged and take it. I have said I believe a degree of scrutiny is needful here. We should ask, what for? We should correlate the new duty with those already pledged. And probably an interrupting duty is less often the one it is well to follow than one which has had something of our time and care. Few fresh calls can have the weighty claim of loyalty to obligation already incurred. But, after all, that on which we finally decide has not sprung from our own wishes. It subjects those wishes to itself. Standing over against us, it summons us to do its bidding, and allows us no more to be our own self-directed masters.
XII
Summing up, then, the jarring characteristics of self-sacrifice,—its frequency, rationality, assertiveness, nearness to self—culture; yes, and its darker traits of risk, immeasurability, and authoritativeness, —does it not begin to appear that I have been calling it by a wrong name? Self-sacrifice is a negative term. It lays stress on the thought that I set myself aside, become in some way less than I was before. And no doubt through all this intricate discussion certain belittlements have been acknowledged, though these have also been shown to lie along the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause, —these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self which chiefly impresses the outsider is something of which the sacrificer is hardly aware. How exquisitely astonished are the men in the parable when called to receive reward for their generous gifts! "Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee, or thirsty and gave thee drink? When saw we thee sick or in prison and came unto thee?" They thought they had only been following their own desires.
Perhaps the most admirable case of self-sacrifice is that in which no single person appears who is profited by our loss. The scholar, the artist, the scientific man dedicate themselves to the interests of undifferentiated humanity. They serve their undecipherable race, not knowing who will obtain gains through their toils. In their sublime benefactions they study the wants of no individual person, not even of themselves. Yet, turn to a man of this type and try to call his attention to the privations he endures, and what will be his answer? "I have no coat? I have no dinner? I have little money? People do not honor me as they honor others? Yes, I believe I lack these trifles. But think what I possess! This great subject; or rather, it possesses me. And it shall have of me whatever it requires."