construction. His very thoughts would become a meaningless series of
impressions if they indicated no reality beside themselves. So empty
would be that fiction, the single and isolated individual. The real
creature, rational and conjunct man, is he who stands in living
relationship with his fellows, they being a veritable part of him and
he of them. Man is essentially a social being, not a being who happens
to be living in society. Society enters into his inmost fibre, and
apart from society he is not. Yet this does not mean that society, any
more than the individual, has an independent existence, prior,
complete, and authoritative. What would society be, parted from the
individuals who compose it? No more than an individual who does not
embody social relationships. The two are mutual conceptions, different
aspects of the same thing. We may view a person abstractly, fixing
attention on his single centre of consciousness; or we may view him
conjunctly, attending to his multifarious ties.

Now what is distinctive of self-sacrifice is that it insists in a
somewhat extreme way on this second and rational mode of regard. It is
a frank confession of interlocking lives. It says, "I have nothing to
do with the abstract, isolated, and finite self. That is a matter of
no consequence. What I care about is the conjunct, social, and
infinite self--that self which is inseparable from others. Where that
calls, I serve." The self-sacrificing person knows no interest of his
own separate from those of his father and mother, his wife and
children. He cannot ask what is good for himself and set it in
contrast with what is good for them. For his own broader existence is
presented in these dear members of his family. And such a man, so far
from being mad, is wise as few of us are. Glorious indeed is the self-
sacrificer, because he is so sane, because in him all pettiness and
detachment are swept away. He appears mad only to those who stand at