ourselves to unrewarded inconvenience for the sake of others.



VII

What I have set myself to make plain in this series of graded examples
is simply this: self-sacrifice is not something exceptional, something
occurring at crises of our lives, something for which we need
perpetually to be preparing ourselves, so that when the great occasion
comes we may be ready to lay ourselves upon its altar. Such
romanticism distorts and obscures. Self-sacrifice is an everyday
affair. By it we live. It is the very air of our moral lungs. Without
it society could not go on for an hour. And that is precisely why we
reverence it so--not for its rarity, but for its importance. Nothing
else, I suppose, so instantly calls on the beholder for a bowing of
the head. Even a slight exhibit of it sends through the sensitive
observer a thrill of reverent abasement. Other acts we may admire;
others we may envy; this we adore.

Perhaps we are now prepared to sum up our descriptive account and
throw what we have observed into a sort of definition. I mean by self-
sacrifice any diminution of my own possessions, pleasures, or powers,
in order to increase those of others. Naturally what we first think of
is the parting with possessions. That is what the word charity most
readily suggests, the giving up of some physical object owned by us
which, even at the moment of giving, we ourselves desire. But the gift
may be other than a physical object. When I would gladly sit, I may
stand in the car for the sake of giving another ease. But the greatest
conceivable self-sacrifice is when I give myself: when, that is, I in