cut it off. But the
amputation would not have been 'lovely.'

VIOLET. No.

L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you--if the light
that is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or are
taken in the snare,--it is indeed time to pluck out, and cut off, I
think: but, so crippled, you can never be what you might have been
otherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or maimed; and the
sacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary.

VIOLET (_after a pause_). But when one sacrifices one's self for others?

L. Why not rather others for you?

VIOLET. Oh! but I couldn't bear that.

L. Then why should they bear it?

DORA (_bursting in, indignant_). And Thermopylae, and Protesilaus, and
Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah's
daughter?

L. (_sustaining the indignation unmoved_). And the Samaritan woman's
son?

DORA. Which Samaritan woman's?

L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29.

DORA (_obeys_). How horrid! As if we meant anything like that!

L. You don't seem to me to know in the least what you do mean, children.
What practical difference is there between 'that,' and what you are
talking about? The Samaritan children had no voice of their own in the
business, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl was
certainly neither boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference in
the dramatic effect; not in the principle.

DORA (_biting her lip_). Well, then, tell us what we ought to mean. As
if you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this moment,
more than we do, if you wouldn't be tiresome!

L. I mean, and have always meant, simply this, Dora;--that the will of
God respecting us is that we shall live by each other's happiness, and
life; not by each other's misery, or death. I made you read that verse
which so shocked you just now, because the relations of parent and child
are typical of all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for its
parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for
them;--that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its
force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the
arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right relations.
Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not
intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves
for each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things which
turn, through mis