The assumption of immortality removes this contradiction; but it also
displaces the supreme gracefulness of this act of sacrifice. The
consideration of a future reward excludes love. There must be a virtue
which even without the belief in immortality, even at the peril of
annihilation, suffices to carry out this sacrifice.

I grant it is ennobling to the human soul to sacrifice present enjoyment
for a future eternal good; it is the noblest degree of egotism; but
egotism and love separate humanity into two very unlike races, whose
limits are never confounded.

Egotism erects its centre in itself; love places it out of itself in the
axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude.
Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot
in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the
ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the
throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the
following moment, or with the view to a martyr's crown--indifferent
whether the reward is in this life or in the next.

Think, O Raphael, of a truth that benefits the whole human race to remote
ages; add that this truth condemns its confessor to death; that this
truth can only be proved and believed if he dies. Conceive this man
gifted with the clear all-embracing and illumining eye of genius, with
the flaming torch of enthusiasm, with all the sublime adaptations for
love; let the grand ideal of this great effect be presented to his soul;
let him have only an obscure anticipation of all the happy beings he will
make; let the present and future crowd at the same time into his soul;
and then answer me,--does this man require to be referred to a future
life?