you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you
love your neighbour. Learn therefore to love yourself with a love
that is wise and healthy, that is large and complete. This is less
easy than it would seem. There is more active charity in the egoism
of a strenuous clairvoyant soul than in all the devotion of the soul
that is helpless and blind. Before you exist for others it behoves
you to exist for yourself; before giving, you first must acquire. Be
sure that, if deeply considered, more value attaches to the particle
of consciousness gained than to the gift of your entire
unconsciousness. Nearly all the great things of this world have been
done by men who concerned themselves not at all with ideas of self-
sacrifice. Plato's thoughts flew on--he paused not to let his tears
fall with the tears of the mourners in Athens; Newton pursued his
experiments calmly, nor left them to search for objects of pity or
sorrow; and Marcus Aurelius above all (for here we touch on the most
frequent and dangerous form of self-sacrifice) Marcus Aurelius
essayed not to dim the brightness of his own soul that he might
confer happiness on the inferior soul of Faustina. And if this was
right in the lives of these men, of Plato and Newton and Marcus
Aurelius, it is equally right in the life of every soul; for each
soul has, in its sphere, the same obligations to self as the soul of
the greatest. We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is
the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete,
independent, and great as lies in its power.' Herein is no egoism,
or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there
must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of
all that we owe to ourselves. To this end we may sacrifice even the
passion for sacrifice; for sacrifice never should be the means of
ennoblement, but only the sign of our being ennobled.