ight to the end, the task for which
we were created. It is easier far, as a rule, to die morally, nay, even
physically, for others, than to learn how best we should live for them.
There are too many beings who thus lull to sleep all initiative,
personal life, and absorb themselves wholly in the idea that they are
prepared and ready for sacrifice. The consciousness that never succeeds
in travelling beyond this idea, that is satisfied ever to seek an
occasion for giving all that which it has, is a consciousness whose
eyes are sealed, and that crouches be-numbed at the foot of the
mountain. There is beauty in the giving of self, and indeed it is only
by giving oneself that we do, at the end, begin to possess ourselves
somewhat; but if all that we some day shall give to our brethren is the
desire to give them ourselves, then are we surely preparing a gift of
most slender value. Before giving, let us try to acquire; for this last
is a duty where from we are not relieved by the fact of our giving. Let
us wait till the hour of sacrifice sounds; till then, each man to his
work. The hour will sound at last; but let us not waste all our time in
seeking it on the dial of life.

66. There are many ways of sacrifice; and I speak not here of the
self-sacrifice of the strong, who know, as Antigone knew, how to yield
themselves up when destiny, taking the form of their brothers' manifest
happiness, calls upon them to abandon their own happiness and their
life. I speak of the sacrifice here that is made by the feeble; that
leans for support, with childish content, on the staff of its own
inanity--that is as an old blind nurse, who would rock us in the
palsied arms of renouncement and useless suffering. On this point let
us note what John Ruskin says, one of the best thinkers of our time:
"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. 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 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 mistaken