on the dial of life.

66. There are many ways of sacrifice; and I speak not here of the
self-sacrifice of the strong, who know, as Antigone knew, how to
yield themselves up when destiny, taking the form of their brothers'
manifest happiness, calls upon them to abandon their own happiness
and their life. I speak of the sacrifice here that is made by the
feeble; that leans for support, with childish content, on the staff
of its own inanity--that is as an old blind nurse, who would rock us
in the palsied arms of renouncement and useless suffering. On this
point let us note what John Ruskin says, one of the best thinkers of
our time: "The will of God respecting us is that we shall live by
each other's happiness and life; not by each other's misery or
death. A child may have to die for its parents; but the purpose of
Heaven is that it shall rather live for them; that not by sacrifice,
but by its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to
them renewal of strength; and as the arrow in the hand of the giant.
So it is in all other right relations. Men help each other by their
joy, not by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves
for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. And
among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, through
mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that the
thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men must be
named as one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught that
there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such . . . that they accept
pain and defeat as if these were their appointed portion; never
understanding that their defeat is not the less to be mourned
because it is more fatal to their enemies than to them."

67. You are told you should love your neighbour as yourself; but if