morality upside down; and in place of the Christian ideal of abounding
life, to set up the pessimistic aim of impoverishment. There is
nothing of this kind in self-sacrifice. Here we assert ourselves, our
conjunct selves. We estimate what will be best for the community of
man and seek to further this at whatever cost to our isolated
individuality. By this dedication to a deserving object sacrifice is
purified, ennobled, and made strong. We speak of the glorious deed of
him who plunges into the water to save a child. But it is a foolish
and immoral thing to risk one's life for a stone, a coin, or nothing
at all. "Is the object deserving?" we must ask, "or shall I reserve
myself for greater need?"

Too easily does our sympathetic and sentimental age, recklessly
eulogistic of altruism, hurry into self-sacrifice. Altruism in itself
is worthless. That an act is unselfish can never justify its
performance. He who would be a great giver must first be a great
person. Our men, and still more our women, need as urgently the gospel
of self-development as that of self-sacrifice; though the two are
naturally supplemental. Our only means of estimating the propriety and
dignity of sacrifice is to inquire how closely connected with
ourselves is its object. Until we can justify this connection, we have
no right to incur it, for genuine sacrifice is always an act of self-
assertion. In saving his regiment and contributing his share toward
saving his country, the soldier asserts his own interests. He is a
good soldier in proportion as he feels these interests to be his;
while the deserter is condemned, not for refusing to give his life to
an alien country and regiment, but because he was small enough to
imagine that these great constituents of himself were alien. I tell
the man on the street the way home because I cannot part his
bewilderment from my own. The problem always is, What may I suitably