CHAPTER III

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE


1. The Problem of Self-Sacrifice.--2. Self-Sacrifice, if a Duty, Must Be of Ultimate Benefit to the Individual.--3. Self-Sacrifice, if Genuine, Must Involve Real Loss to the Individual.--4. The Conception of Organization Furnishes Solution of the Problem.--5. All Organization Involves the Sacrifice of Part to the Whole.-- 6. Self-Mastery.--7. Self-Sacrifice.--8. Is Self-Sacrifice Due to Merely Temporary Maladjustment?--9. On the Contrary, It Is a Necessary Factor in Self-Organization.--10. Optimism and Pessimism.--11. Conclusion. 1. The Problem of Self-Sacrifice. The subject of self-sacrifice has always been one of special difficulty for the student of morality. Indeed, there is reason for regarding it as the gravest problem in the field of Ethics, since ethical reflection itself originated in the urgent necessity of solving it. As long as the conduct of men was determined by customs which conserved the well-being of group and community, no question arose of a possible discrepancy between the obligations of morality and the good of the individual. But when individuality was so far developed as to produce in man a consciousness of aims and interests belonging to him as an individual which clashed with the desires and ambitions of other individuals and the interest of the community, it was inevitable that he should ask the question: “Why should I abandon my own plans, surrender my own ambitions, in order that the plans and ambitions of others may be fulfilled?” This crisis in moral development occurred with the Greeks in the fifth century B.c. The Sophists cut the Gian knot by asserting that no obligation existed for the individual to sacrifice his
237


THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
238


interest to the welfare of his fellows-that every man's interest was his good aid the law of the state represented the interest of the strongest individuals. The illustrious contributions of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to ethical theory were prompted by a desire to find rational grounds for a social obligation supreme over all considerations of individual interest. But while the insight of these great thinkers was more illuminating and profound than the shallow and dogmatic pronouncements of the Sophists, still they were only partially successful in solving the problem. They agree in basing social obligation on the faculty of, reason common to all Men-holding that if men would take the trouble to think clearly concerning human life and conduct they would be convinced that the interests of all individuals in the state are identical and hence that any individual who serves community or nation is thereby attaining his own private interest. They were able to demonstrate that such a community of interest existed, however, among a comparatively small number of fellow-citizens, only; much larger classes such as women, slaves, and barbarians, being left partly or wholly out of account. Hence the problem of the larger social obligation extending to all fellow-humans was left unsolved. It remained for Christianity to enforce this obligation in its fullest extension, making self-sacrifice the ]keynote of its teaching and communicating to mediaeval and modern morality a negative and ascetic tone which contrasts sharply with the freedom and spontaneity of Greek life. In justification of thus enjoining the individual to sacrifice his interest to the good of humanity there is clearly suggested in the Christian gospel a view of human nature and human life much more adequate and profound than that of Greek philosophy. But this has been so often confused by exponents of Christianity with merely a supernatural sanction of morality which recompenses the individual in a

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
239


future life for the pain and privation undergone in the discharge of duty here, that the whole problem must be considered afresh by present-day Ethics and, if possible, a solution found which will agree with modern conceptions of man, his social relations, and his place in the world. 2. Self-Sacrifice, if a Duty, Must Be of Ultimate Benefit to the Individual. The problem of self-sacrifice arises from the presence in man's moral experience of two sets of facts neither of which can be disputed, but which seem to contradict and even to exclude one another. The first of these facts is, that whatever it be that conscience requires of man, it is for his real benefit to recognize and fulfill this obligation. This identity of the Good with the highest interest of man has been sufficiently emphasized in previous pages. In the case of self-sacrifice it seems an indubitable fact, therefore, that-.no matter how extreme the sacrifice-if it is a duty, then it is the fulfillment of the individual's own good. Even the extreme of self-sacrifice recommended by Christianity must thus be regarded as a method of self-realization-just as much as the observance of the mean, or the attainment of a harmony, in conduct, was to the Greek moralist. In this connection Green says with his usual discernment:

“It is not because it involves the renunciation of so much pleasure that we deem the life of larger self-denial which the Christian conscience calls for, a higher life than was conceived by the Greek philosophers; but because it implies a fuller realization of the human soul. It is not the renunciation as such but the spiritual state which it represents that constitutes the value of a life spent in self-devoted service to mankind; and it represents, we must remember, not merely a certain system of desires and interests, on the part of the persons who make the renunciation, but certain social development in consequence of which those desires and interests are called into play.”1

1    GREEN. Prolegomena to Ethics, § 273, p. 332.


THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
240


3. Self-Sacrifice, if Genuine, Must Involve Real Loss to the Individual. A second group of facts which are equally important seem to show that moral value attaches only to such “self-sacrifice” as entails real loss. When this aspect of the subject comes home to us in full force, it becomes impossible to treat self-sacrifice as an incident, merely, in self-realization. Moral experience teaches us that self-sacrifice is a real surrender of personal interest involving the pain of irretrievable loss and calling for genuine heroism. Shall we understand it then as a temporary discomfort due to the denial of present desire for the sake of future well-being? This is to make self-sacrifice a part of enlightened prudence. Such an interpretation appears to contravene the plain teaching of moral experience and to rob this vitally important feature of morality of its true meaning. It was this aspect of the subject which impressed Leslie Stephen, who believed that morality has been developed as a means for securing social as distinct from individual survival, and that the obligation to altrm can never be reconciled with individual interest. Certainly his remarks upon this subject contain much shrewd sense:

“When we listen to the careful demonstrations of the reality of benevolence, when we are told again and again that a man may, and in fact does, sacrifice his own happiness to the good of his fellows, we are edified and convinced. But we receive something of a shook when the edifying moralist suddenly turns round and tells us that the sacrifice is only temporary, that is to say, that it is after all unreal. It is still more surprising when this is presented, and precisely by the moralists who profess to take the loftiest theory, not merely as expressing the fact, but as an a priori truth deducible from the very nature of things. For what can this be but to fall back upon the purely egoistic doctrine.”2

2    STEPHEN: Science Of Ethics, ed. of 1882, p. 430.


SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
241


4. The Conception of Organization Furnishes the Solution of the Problem. How shall we interpret self-sacrifice so as to harmonize these discordant facts? The conception of moral development as a progressive self-organization through the instrumentality of volition gives us the key to the puzzle. For all organization, not only in the development of conscious intelligence, but also in the evolution of all living matter, involves two opposite and complementary aspects. On the one hand there is differentiation or the division of the whole which is being organized into disparate parts. Thus the evolution of the organism is accompanied by a multiplication of cells and structures, the development of consciousness by a diversification of ideas and experiences. On the other hand and equally prominent is integration, in which the independence of these parts is canceled and they are adjusted within a comprehensive whole. Thus organic evolution is accompanied by an increasing inter-dependence of tissues and organs, and personal development by a more and more perfect correlation of the contents of consciousness. These two aspects of differentiation and integration characterize evolution universally and may be accepted as essential features of all growth, conscious and unconscious. And in this fact that all growth, as an organizing process, encourages the development of parts in independence of one another and of the whole to which they belong, while it also destroys this independence and subordinates the parts to the good of the whole, we have a possible explanation of the presence and importance of self-sacrifice in moral development. 5. All Organization Involves the Sacrifice of the Part to the Whole.-Such sacrifice of parts to the whole prevails throughout the field of organic evolution. The single organism is a colony of cells and tissues crowding one another for place and competing with one another for

THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
242


food. Yet the health of the organism and the proper balance of its functions necessitate that the activities of these constituent parts be strictly limited and that they be prevented from attaining their maximum of size and strength. Frequently in the life-history of organisms structures are developed to completeness and maturity simply as a means to the inception and growth of other structures more important to the existence of individual or species.3 Then, when these latter are produced, the former-like a temporary scaffolding-are destroyed. Striking instances of such sacrifice of one part or member of a living organism to the welfare of another or of the whole have been observed. Evidently the familiar statement has more than a figurative meaning which compares the act of self-sacrifice to the dying of the seed that the young plant may live and grow. Turning from ontogeny to phylogeny we find that the evolution of the species is accomplished by a process of struggle and selection in which the individual is sacrificed to the welfare of his race or species. Individuals are born in much greater numbers than the environment can support and then a large majority of these are exterminated, often suffering painful deaths, in order that only the individuals possessing the best natural equipment shall survive and reproduce their kind. An analogous process of competition and resulting selection goes on among the species in their turn, many living forms suffering extinction in order that a more per-feet adaptation of the existing forms of life to the resources of the environment shall be secured. Many species seem to be developed simply as bridges from the parent form to the one still more divergent and then to

3    A beautiful case is that of the “nurse-cells” which in some insect and other forms surround the young egg-cell and nourish it. The egg-cell grows rapidly at the expense of the nurse-cells, which, being steadily depleted, become mere rudiments attached to the egg-cell and then finally disappear. (WILSON: The Cell in Development and Heredity, p. 151.)


SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
243


be eliminated in competition with these two. Thus we see that throughout the entire field of life evolution as a progressive organization involves the complementary processes of differentiation and integration, in which parts are developed in distinction from the whole and, at the same time, this independence is canceled in a subordination of all parts to the good of the whole. In all these cases of the sacrifice of parts or members to the welfare of the whole undergoing development, it is worth noting that the benefit of. the whole to which the sacrifice of the parts is instrumental accrues only after the part has been suppressed or destroyed. 6. Self-Mastery. The evolution of intelligent consciousness is achieved by volition which is itself an organizing agency. The work of volition displays those two features of organization just mentioned--more strongly emphasized, however, and set in sharper and clearer relief. Self-organization begins with a differentiation or diversification of conscious life. Volition first expresses itself in differentiating out of a mass of instinctive tendencies a number of separate desires, each having a distinct object and employing special methods in its pursuit. The differentiation of these desires is the first step in self-organization and the pre-requisite of all further moral development. ]For the individual to be conscious of certain definite needs, for him to desire certain special objects as ends, and also to have knowledge of the ways of gratifying these desires, of availing himself of the resources of the objective world--this ability, while it occupies the very lowest place in the scale of moral excellence, is still the absolutely indispensable foundation upon which the higher development rests. The individual who is too dull to have any definite desires, too listless to make any special demands upon the world, and too incapable to secure the few objects he does desire is, morally speaking, the one absolutely hopeless

THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
244


case. It is necessary to Self-realization, then, that a number of different desires and purposes be developed within the consciousness of the individual, and that each of these desires should acquire a certain strength and independence. But organization requires that this process be supplemented by a complementary activity of correlation and adjustment in which these different desires are subordinated as means to larger ends. It is a natural, an inevitable, consequence of raising a desire to clearest consciousness and adding to this consciousness a knowledge of the most expeditious method of gratification, that the desire in question should insist upon its own gratification regardless of any other considerations whatever. The result of the primary differentiating of desires within the individual is thus to put him at the mercy of a number of eager and aggressive impulses, each of which is clamoring for its own satisfaction to the exclusion of the others. Hence volition is compelled to undertake the work of suppressing these desires in their independence and isolation--only permitting them to exist as they are made conformable to the total interest of the individual. This repression which, from the standpoint of the single desire, may be injurious and destructive, is strongly resisted. Volition is compelled to overcome this resistance and forcibly to restrain the rebellions desire or purpose. Such forcible restraint causes distress and pain to the individual; since the desire which is subjugated after struggle is a part of himself and he suffers both the distress of a nature divided against itself and the pain of a consciousness deprived of its usual gratification. This form of self-sacrifice which arises from the necessity of integrating all single desires and purposes within the unity of the individual life may be called self-mastery, to distinguish it from self-sacrifice proper, which will be later discussed. Plato treats of this subject of self-mastery in a well-known passage of

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
245


the Republic. Socrates is made to remark upon the paradox involved in the expression ” master of himself.“ ” For the man who is master of himself will, also, I presume, be the slave of himself, and the slave will be the master. For the subject of all these phrases is the same person.“4 The use of such an expression is due in the opinion of Socrates to the presence in human nature of two principles, a good and a bad, and a man is said to be master of himself when the good principle is master of the bad. He further maintains that, of these two principles, which are in constant conflict, the good is the rational and the bad the sentient or irrational part of our nature; and this is generally true because the ends of reason, being concepts, are larger and more inclusive than the particular objects of sensuous desire. Self-mastery does not usually consist, as we might suppose, in a certain amount of compulsory restraint placed upon all desires equally, in the interest of individual well-being. The fact is that in most cases the great majority of desires submit without much resistance to subordination and control, and the rebellion is concentrated in a few desires (or perhaps just a single one) especially strong and insistent in the particular individual-his ” besetting “ sin or sins, as the expression is. With such desires man must fight, and over them he must triumph, if he is to realize himself as an individual. Of course, any desire may prove thus difficult to control, but there are certain impulses and appetites which seem particularly liable to make trouble with all human beings. Such is the appetite for stimulants and narcotics which because uncontrolled has ruined the life of many an individual. Our literature contains many descriptions of the agonizing experiences of individuals who have fought desperat`âwith the craving for alcoholic drink and finally have conquered it-and mastered themselves.

4    Republic, 431 A.


THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
246


The passion for gaming and the desire for sexual gratification belong to the same class of appetites which often possess exceptional strength and which, unless closely restrained, will escape from control. Nor is the total interest of the individual to which.all the single desires are made subservient, always represented by the demands of all his desires and purposes in their organized unity. Just as the resistance of the different parts, to such an adjustment, may be concentrated in a single desire, so the good of the individual as a whole may be represented by a single purpose or desire. Thus the part and the whole confront one another in the guise of two conflicting desires, and self-mastery consists in the victory of the one over the other. To take a concrete instance chosen almost at random from a large and important class, the total interest of an individual may be represented by a comprehensive purpose to achieve success as an artist, thus realizing marked creative ability and gratifying a strong love of beauty. The chief obstacle to the realization of this purpose in a youth i)r young man may reside in the presence of strong sexual and social impulses which conflict with the larger purpose because they resist that postponement of marriage and domestic life which a long period of preparatory study and travel, would entail. Here self-mastery, the attainment of the more comprehensive good, demands that the desire for immediate marriage and a home, be subordinated and its gratification postponed, in order that the larger end be pursued which, if realized, will provide for a more permanent and adequate satisfaction of these desires as well. Self-mastery-self-denial-prove then to be instrumental to self-development. In these experiences, painful as they are, the individual gains and not loses. Yet it must not be forgotten that he does not experience the gain when he suffers the loss. The attainment of the larger interest

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
247


does not occur simultaneously with the loss of the desired object. If it did, the pain of deprivation might be. canceled and overcome by the satisfaction of a larger attainment. But the condition of achieving the greater goods is that the lesser goods shall first be surrendered. The pain of denial and deprivation must be endured before the satisfaction of a full and harmonious expression of individuality can be experienced. Moreover, the satisfaction of fulfilling the larger aims of his entire nature cannot even be imagined adequately by the individual, because this is a satisfaction, not of his nature as it is at present but of his present nature after it has been changed by just such painful adjustments as he now is making. Moral development requires the sacrifice of objects proved in experience to be good, on behalf of others which might not at present be satisfactory even though successfully achieved. The ambitious boy abandons amusements which give him keenest delight in order to acquire information and training in a field of activity whose significance he does not clearly understand and whose value he does not fully appreciate. But thus it is with all growth, spiritual as well as natural, the interest of an assured present is sacrificed to a larger future which is yet to be. 7. Self-Sacrifice. The very process of integration which we have been describing--of activities within the life of the individual--is itself a differentiation. For it is through such an adjustment of different desires and impulses that the nature of the individual is organized and his abilities all directed towards the attainment of some supreme aim or life-purpose. Knowledge of such overmastering interests in himself makes the individual conscious of the dominance of similar aims and ambitions over the lives of other individuals. The respective interests of self and others soon show themselves to be discordant. Self-organization, or Goodness, then necessitates another process of integration,

THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
248


this time upon a larger scale, the adjustments of these warring interests within the unity of an organized social system. When, in the course of moral development, the necessity thus arises for the individual to subordinate that interest which he has come to identify with himself, to the welfare of others,-then self-sacrifice proper first enters the moral life. Previous to the emergence of individuality through the coordination of the various desires, true self-sacrifice is impossible, for the self-in-its-unity has not yet attained to conscious expression. Hence neither the child nor the savage is capable of self-sacrifice in the full meaning of the word, since the individuality of neither has come to conscious existence through the adoption of plans and purposes which he recognizes as his own and distinct from all others. This awakening of individuality to consciousness of itself comes in the history of the race when, owing to a developing intelligence and easier conditions of life, men refuse to be bound longer in their conduct by tradition and custom, but assert their rights as individuals to choose, each of them, the manner of life which appeals to his intelligence and suits his taste. It occurs in the development of the individual when, at the period of adolescence, the youth is unwilling to be dominated longer by the practices and point-of-view of his family, and considers plans and adopts purposes which he proposes to pursue as an independent individual. Just as much as the total interest of the individual is through its greater complexity and superior organization, stronger and more compelling than any one of his single desires, so much the greater is the power of resistance it shows when attacked. Hence the subordination or suppression of self-interest is a greater task, calling for more effort and persistence than that of self-mastery, and it is accompanied by struggle and suffering correspondingly more intense. The individual who feels the obligation to sacrifice

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
249


his interest--his most cherished hopes and plans--for the good of another faces the gravest crisis of the moral life. His soul is the scene of a mighty conflict upon the issue of which may, hang his moral salvation. Our recognition of the high moral worth of self-sacrifice, as well as our appreciation of its almost insurmountable difficulty, is witnessed by the spontaneous burst of approval and admiration that greets every notable instance of it which is brought to public attention. Indeed the public praise and eulogy--in newspaper, pulpit, and periodical--of those who have under unusual circumstances sacrificed property or health or life for the sake of others' welfare, may lead us to think of self-sacrifice as something which occurs only under extraordinary conditions and in a dramatic setting-as when the engineer dies at the throttle in saving the train, or a miner risks his life in returning to a burning mine in order to rescue his injured comrade, or the sailor insists that his shipmates go first in life-boat or breeches-buoy and is left to freeze or drown. But self-sacrifice, in order to be genuine, requires no dramatic setting, no wide publicity-it, need in fact be known to no one except the individual who is undergoing it. Such self-sacrifice is constantly occurring with no blare of trumpets or bursts of applause, but just as a part of recognized duty-hard, but cheerfully or stoically endured. Thus there are parents working to the breaking-point and foregoing nearly every rightful pleasure, in order that children may be educated; there are sons and daughters giving up plans and ambitions which seem to mean more than life itself to them, in order to care for an aged or infirm parent; there are physicians wearing themselves out in the relief of pain and the curing of disease among their fellows; there are ministers and teachers expending their intelligence and energy without stint in ministering to the souls which have been committed to their charge. What

THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
250


Professor Royce says about loyalty in this connection is also true of self-sacrifice which is an essential part of all true loyalty.

“My own mind also chooses some of the plainest and obscurest people whom I chance to know, the most straightforward and simple-minded of folk, whose loyalty is even all the more sure to me because I can certainly affirm that they at least cannot be making any mere display of loyalty in order that they should be seen of men. Nobody knows of their loyalty except those that are in more or less direct touch with them; and these usually appreciate this loyalty too little. You all of you similarly know plain and wholly obscure men and women of whom the world has not beard and is not worthy, but who have possessed and who have proved in the presence of you who have chanced to observe them a loyalty to their chosen causes which was not indeed expressed in martial deeds but which was quite as genuine a loyalty as that of a Samurai or as that of Arnold von Winkelried when be rushed on the Austrian spears. As for ordinary expressions of loyalty, not at critical moments and in the heroic instants that come to the plainest lives, but in daily business, we are all aware how the letter-carrier and the house-maid may live, and often do live when they choose, as complete a daily life of steadfast loyalty as could any knight or king.”5 With these facts before our winds we condemn as the veriest sophistry any view which does not admit that the sacrifices exacted by duty are real, or attempts to explain them as part of a larger prudence or as the gratification of sympathetic or social impulses. Such interpretations of self-sacrifice do not explain it: they explain it away. Self-sacrifice is a means to Self-realization? Yes, assuredly! But it is not the sacrificed self which is finally realized. It is not the surrendered interest-the unfulfilled ambitions, the thwarted aims, the lost hopes-which are triumphantly attained. No, it is the self whose character has been transformed through the ordeal of suffering and

5    ROYCE: Philosophy of Loyalty, pp. 112-13.


SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
251


sacrifice that is finally realized: it is an interest which has been altered and enlarged by denial and deprivation that is triumphantly attained. Self-sacrifice is then a real “dying to self” in which the pangs of dissolution undergone by the old nature are the birth-pains of the new. “The higher or personal self can be realized only through the death of the lower or individual self, as lower and merely individual.”6 “The individual must die to an isolated life--i.e. a life for and in himself, a life in which the immediate satisfaction of desire, as his desire, is an end in itself--in order that he may live the spiritual life, the universal life which really belongs to him as a spiritual or self-conscious being.”7 It is necessary that the limitations of a narrow and exclusive individuality shall be overcome if man is to realize the larger possibilities of his nature. But such individuality maintains its independence and isolation with utmost stubbornness. It must be crushed and broken; for thus only can it be rendered pliant and adaptable--capable of adjustment along with the differing interests of other individuals within a comprehensive system of social ends and activities. As long as Self. realization compels man to make this adjustment, it will remain a severe ordeal fraught with spiritual struggle and soul agony. Self-sacrifice cannot be expelled from human life, then; but seems destined to remain one of the most profound and searching--as well as the most characteristic--experiences in man's moral life. 8. Is Self-Sacrifice Due to Merely Temporary Maladjustment? While the social adjustment of individuals whose desires and ambitions are at variance with the good of society is difficult and exceedingly painful, is it not sure to become much easier and less painful as moral development proceeds? In the course of social evolution are not man's social instincts and impulses certain to

6    SETH: Ethical Principles, p. 207.
7    CAIRD: Hegel, p. 213.


THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
252


be so far strengthened, and his understanding of the advantages of cooperation so much increased, that he will seek others' interests as naturally and spontaneously as his own? Herbert Spencer looked forward to such a state of human society in the far distant future, in which there would be no more need of self-sacrifice, and the conflicting claims of egoism and altruism would be completely reconciled. In his own words:

“From the laws of life it must be concluded that unceasing social discipline will so mold human nature that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and all. The scope for altruistic activities will not exceed the desire for altruistic satisfactions.”8 Confining ourselves just now to the trend, of social development and the direction of civilization as we can observe them--and not asking whether the laws which govern moral development as a progressive self-organization permit of the elimination of self-sacrifice-we find slight reason for expecting that such a condition of ready-prepared social adjustment and harmony will come in the near or distant future. It is true that man becomes more socialized as civilization advances. We are less confident than Spencer was that his experience of the benefits of social life and his acquisition of habits socially useful are modifying his native instincts and impulses in any decided or revolutionary fashion. There is no doubt, however, that as he becomes further civilized man gains a more adequate knowledge of his community of interest with his fellows and a more intelligent appreciation of the importance and value of social organization and social service. Such knowledge of social relations, being transmitted through training and education from one generation to the next, steadily

8    SPENCER: Data of Ethics, § 95, p. 294.


SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
253


accumulates and must, it might appear, make altruistic action easier and the social adjustment more natural and spontaneous. Hence we should expect to find the citizen of a highly civilized state more willing to serve his nation at the expense of private interest than the member of a society not so highly civilized. Unfortunately the facts are otherwise--or partially so--owing to the operation of other factors which have a contrary influence. For the mental development which accompanies advance in civilization not only leads to an increased sense of social obligation but it also makes clearer and more acute the consciousness of individual interest. The stimulation of intellectual and imaginative faculties in an advanced civilization gives to the individual a much more vivid and realizing sense of his own interest-present and future. His imagination enables him to enjoy in anticipation the pleasures of fulfilling his ambitions-and equally to suffer in apprehension of the failure of his plans and the frustration of his purposes. An increased sensitivity to pain seems to be an accompaniment of civilization, due both to added power of imagining it beforehand and to a more delicate sensibility which has resulted from easier conditions of life. Hence the citizen of a half-civilized state might, and probably would, respond more readily to the call to take up arms and suffer danger, pain, and possible death, for his country, than would the educated man of modern society. And this would not be because he had a clearer or more intelligent conception of his duty as a citizen but because he had less ability to imagine the hardships and sufferings he would have to undergo on the one hand, and the satisfactions and successes he might be compelled to forgo, on the other.9 Yet the outcome is that he can

9    Compare this statement of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. III, Chap. XII): “If then the case in regard to courage is similar to this, death and wounds will be painful to the courageous man and involuntary; but he will endure them because endurance is honorable


THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
254


be depended upon to sacrifice himself as an individual, more willingly, suffering peril and death in his country's cause with less hesitation, than his civilized descendant. These facts have caused it to be alleged as a penalty of civilization that nations lose their “fighting edge.” The intensifying of self-consciousness, the training of imagination, and the refinement of sensibility in the individual all tend to make him less ready to place himself at the disposal of his country as a weapon or instrument to be used in its defense. Hence, it is predicted, nations in which civilization has progressed thus far will be at a decided disadvantage in time of war and will perhaps be defeated and finally superseded by other peoples, in whom mental development has not proceeded so far as to interfere with the action of instinctive loyalty and unthinking courage. However this may be--and many other facts would have to be considered before assent were given to such a conclusion--the significance of the whole matter it bears upon the present argument is that an increasing knowledge of the character and importance of the social relation among the individuals that compose a society does not of necessity make the sacrifice of private interests to the public good any easier for these individuals. For the same growth of intelligence that enlightens the individual concerning his social relationships gives him also a clearer conception

and avoidance disgraceful. Way, in proportion as he possesses virtue in its fullness and is happy, will be his pain at the prospect of death; for to such an one life is preeminently valuable, and he will be consciously deprived at death of the greatest blessings. But, painful as such deprivation is, he is none the less courageous, nay perhaps he is even more courageous, as he willingly sacrifices these blessings for noble conduct on the field of battle. It is not the case, then, that all virtues imply a pleasurable activity, except in so far as one attains to the end. Still, it is true perhaps, after all, that people who enjoy a happy life are not such good soldiers as people who are less courageous but have nothing to lose, as these last are ready to face any danger, and will sell their lives for a small sum of money” (Welldon's trans., p. 89).

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
255


of his interests as an individual and an added power of imagining his own successes and failures. Thus self-sacrifice becomes no easier, and may even be rendered more difficult and painful. 9. On the Contrary It Is a Necessary Factor in Self-Organization. Self-sacrifice has been interpreted as the surrender of the narrower purposes and ambitions with which individuality has identified itself in order that the larger ends of the social self may be realized. Such an interpretation should satisfy all persons who believe in the reality of self-sacrifice--except, to be sure, those who, like Leslie Stephen, believe that self-sacrifice, in order to be real, must involve final and irretrievable loss to the self. From this extreme standpoint, if self-sacrifice is regarded as instrumental in self-realization, its meaning is entirely destroyed and it is degraded into a form of self-interest. Thus if one who sacrifices his plans and purposes for another's benefit is aiming at his own self-realization his sacrifice is not genuine and his conduct is merely prudent. And moral enlightenment is all that is necessary to remove as groundless from the experience of man any feeling of pain or sorrow in the subordination of private interest to social welfare and to create instead the pleasant consciousness of securing his own good. This position would be justified if our actions were in every case inevitably determined--as Socrates, for example, believed--by what we, upon solely intellectual grounds, thought was for our highest interest. Then certainly virtue would be knowledge and our pursuit of the largest good would be simply an affair of intellectual enlightenment. But the facts are nearly the reverse. Man's action is not necessarily determined by what he believes to be true from the exercise of his reason, and in independence of action. Rather is his knowledge determined by his action, his conception of truth dependent upon his conduct with its experiences of

THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
256


success and failure. The true idea is the idea that can be realized, i.e. that satisfies volition in increasing the fullness and variety of self-conscious life. Hence the largest knowledge at the command of any human individual--the body of accepted truths in any generation--but sums up the results of human achievement in the past. The science of Ethics is thus a systematic reflection upon the experience of man in organizing his life and thus fulfilling the power of self-development resident in his own will. Now the individual must act with the fullest knowledge available if his action is to build upon his own experience and the experience of his fellow-men. But to new situations in which the individual finds himself this knowledge is never adequate; since it can receive conclusive verification only in his own experience and the prospect of further development open before every human being involves the possibility of entirely new and unexpected experiences. Hence at each successive step in his moral development man is compelled to abandon objects which his experience has shown to be satisfactory for the sake of others whose reality and value await their final verification in the results of the action which he is then undertaking. Such acts are primarily ventures of will and not expressions of knowledge; and they are of necessity painful, because they call for the negation of objects through which the self itself has found expression-thus putting its very existence in jeopardy in order that other and larger objects may be sought and, if possible, attained. Self-sacrifice is the greatest as well as the most painful of these ventures, requiring the surrender of objects on which the existence and integrity of individuality itself seem to depend, as the condition of pursuing social ends which are untried and hence in character and value uncertain. Thus self-sacrifice is revealed as a necessary consequence of the fundamental fact of morality, that moral development is

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
257


an organization of conduct achieved by volition and not an organization of ideas accomplished by thought and reproduced in action. 10. Optimism and Pessimism. Self-sacrifice appears as one and perhaps the most important of the adjustments of parts to the whole which are effected by volition in the course of its organizing activity. Viewed from this standpoint, but with a slight change of angle, it may be regarded as a consequence of the maladjustment which actually exists within the nature of man and throughout the world of human experience. The existence of such maladjustment, deep-seated and thorough-going, cannot be disputed. The presence of moral evil, springing from the opposing interests of individuals in society and the conflicting tendencies within these individuals themselves, testifies to its presence in the nature of the human individual and in human society. The existence of physical evil likewise, the indescribable suffering and painful deaths inflicted upon countless thousands of innocent human beings by the forces of nature in fire and famine, flood and storm, earthquake and volcanic eruption, proves that the natural universe is not adjusted to the needs and purposes of man. It is this maladjustment with which intelligently directed will is contending in the evolution of human life and conduct, and which it has been able in a measure to overcome. This process is necessarily painful. But suffering cannot be escaped in any event; it must follow from the lack of adjustment and harmony in the actual nature of things. In the organization of life through the instrumentality of volition, we see this pain and suffering made a means to a larger satisfaction, however, the extent and fullness of intelligent life being increased by the number and variety of originally conflicting elements that have been adjusted within it. Such an understanding of moral development leads us to a view of the world of

SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
259


that nature on its face so peaceful and “bright with gladness” is the scene of constant turmoil and destruction.10 But we are indebted to science for the knowledge that this suffering is not useless and not meaningless, but through its instrumentality adaptation is being secured and evolution is proceeding. In the sphere of intelligence and personality likewise a survey of moral development shows us how in the process of self-organization man, by suppressing his single desires in their independence, gains control over his entire nature, all of whose different resources are thus put at his command; by sacrificing his interest as an individual he gains entrance into a larger life which provides a wider and more varied field for the exercise of his own powers; and by seeking to understand, and adapt himself to, the laws and forces of the universe, he allies himself with the process of universal evolution and the cause of world progress. 11. Conclusion. In the only world we human beings know the cost of progress is pain, and suffering is an accompaniment of evolution. Moreover, mental development in man has for its penalty an increase of this suffering--present pain being more acute and highly focalized in his consciousness, while that of the past is preserved in memory, and that of the future anticipated in imagination. Yet for this, his superior intelligence more than recompenses him by revealing with increasing fullness the stupendous results which are being achieved through the toil and travail of the world--reproducing in his conscious life the main stages of universal evolution, and awakening within his soul some appreciation of the significance and value of the ends that are being realized therein.

10    Cf. DARWIN: Origin of species, Chap. III.


THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
260




REFERENCES

LESLIE STEPHEN, Science of Ethics, Chap. X, § 4.
ALEXANDER: Moral Order and Progress, Book II, Chap. IV.
SETH: Ethical Principles, Part I, Chap. III, § 10.
CAIRD: Evolution of Religion, Vol. II, Lecture VII.
THILLY, Introduction to Ethics, Chap. X.
RASHDALL: Theories of Good and Evil, Book II, Chap. III