IV

A third objection declares sacrifice to be needless. Its very
appearance rests on a misconception. We mistakenly suppose that in
abating our own for the sake of our neighbor's good, we lose. In
reality this is our true mode of enlargement. The interests of the
individual and society are not hostile or alien, but supplemental.
Society is nothing but the larger individual; so that he alone
realizes himself who enters most fully into social relations, making
the well-being of society his own. This is plain enough when we study
the working of a small and comprehensible portion of society. The
child does not lose through identification with family life. That is
his great means of realizing himself. To assume contrast and
antagonism between family interest and the interest of the child is
palpably unwarranted and untrue. Equally unwarranted is a similar
assumption in the broader ranges of society. When we talk of
sacrifice, we refer merely to the first stage and outer aspect of the
act. Underneath, self-interest is guarded, the individual giving up
his individuality only through obtaining a larger individuality still.

Such identity of interest between society and the individual the
moralists of the eighteenth century are never tired of pointing out.
If they are right, and the identity is complete, then sacrifice is
abolished or is only a generous illusion. But these men never quite
succeeded in persuading the English people of their doctrine, at least
they never carried their thought fully over into the common mind.