the opposite point of view, but in his eyes it is they who are
ridiculous. In fact, each must be counted crazy or wise according to
the view we take of what constitutes the real person.

I remember a story current in our newspapers during the Civil War.
Just before a battle, an officer of our army, knowing of what
consequence it was that his regiment should hold its ground, hastened
to the rear to see that none of his men were straggling. He met a
cowardly fellow trying to regain the camp. Turning upon him in a
passion of disgust, he said, "What! Do you count your miserable little
life worth more than that of this great army?" "Worth more to me,
sir," the man replied. How sensible! How entirely just from his own
point of view, that of the isolated self! Taking only this into
account, he was but a moral child, incapable of comprehending anything
so difficult as a conjunct self. He imagined that could he but save
this eating, breathing, feeling self, no matter if the country were
lost, he would be a gainer. What folly! What would existence be worth
outside the total inter-relationship of human beings called his land?
But this fact he could not perceive. To risk his separate self in such
a cause seemed absurd. Turn for a moment and see how absurd the
separate self appears from the point of view of the conjunct. When our
Lord hung upon the cross, the jeering soldiers shouted, "He saved
others, himself he cannot save." No, he could not; and his inability
seemed to them ridiculous, while it was in reality his glory. His true
self he was saving--himself and all mankind--the only self he valued.



IX