some way allow my own powers to be narrowed in order that those of
some one else may be enlarged. Parents are familiar with such
exquisite charity, parents who put themselves to daily hardship
because they want education for their boys. But they have no monopoly
in this kind. I who stand in the guardianship of youth have frequent
occasion to miss a favorite pupil, boy or girl, who throws up a
college training and goes home--often, in my judgment, mistakenly--to
support, or merely to cheer, the family there. Of course such gifts
are incomparable. No parting with one's goods, no abandonment of one's
pleasures, can be measured against them. Yet this is what is going on
all over the country where devoted mother, gallant son, loyal husband,
are limiting their own range of existence for the sake of broadening
that of certain whom they hold dear.



VIII

But when we have thus assembled our omnipresent facts and set them in
order for cool assessment, the enigma of self-sacrifice only appears
the more clearly. Why _should_ a man sacrifice himself? Why
voluntarily accept loss? Each of us has but a single life. Each feels
the pressure of his own needs and desires. These point the way to
enlargement. How, then, can I disinterestedly prefer another's gain?
Each of us is penned within the range of his solitary consciousness,
which may be broadened or narrowed but cannot be passed. It is
incumbent on us, therefore, to study our own enrichment. Anticipating
whatever might confirm or crumble our being, we should strenuously
seize the one and reject the other. Deliberately to turn toward loss
would seem to be crazy. What should a man accept in exchange for his