possible involves tragedy. One part of the nature becomes arrayed
against another. We must die to live. Our lower goods are found
incompatible with our higher. Pleasure, comfort, property, friends,
possibly life itself, have become hostile to our more inclusive aims
and must be cast aside. It is true that when the tragic antithesis is
presented and we can reach our higher goods only by loss of the lower,
hesitation is ruin. It is true too that on account of that element of
self-assertion to which I have drawn, attention, the genuine
sacrificer is ordinarily unaware of any such tragedy. But none the
less tragedy is there. To suppose it absent would strip sacrifice of
what we regard as most characteristic.

Nor can we pause here. Those who would call self-sacrifice a glorious
madness have still further justification. A leap into the dark we must
at least admit it to be, For trace it rationally as far as we may,
there always remains uncertainty at the close. There is, for example,
uncertainty about ultimate results. The mother toiling for her child,
and neglecting for its sake most of what would render her own life
rich, can never know that this child will grow up to power. The day
may come when she will wish it had died in childhood. The glory of her
action is bound up with this darkness. Were the soldier, marching to
the field, sure that his side would be victorious, he would be only
half a hero. The consequences of self-sacrifice can never be certain,
foreseen, calculable. There must be risk. Omit it, and the sacrifice
disappears. Indeed nothing in life which calls forth high admiration
is free from this touch of faith and courage, this movement into the
unknown. It is at the very heart of self-sacrifice.

But besides the unknown character of the result there is usually
uncertainty as regards the cost. The sacrificer does not give