Few fresh calls can have the weighty claim of loyalty to obligation
already incurred. But, after all, that on which we finally decide has
not sprung from our own wishes. It subjects those wishes to itself.
Standing over against us, it summons us to do its bidding, and allows
us no more to be our own self-directed masters.
XII
Summing up, then, the jarring characteristics of self-sacrifice,--its
frequency, rationality, assertiveness, nearness to self--culture; yes,
and its darker traits of risk, immeasurability, and authoritativeness,
--does it not begin to appear that I have been calling it by a wrong
name? Self-sacrifice is a negative term. It lays stress on the thought
that I set myself aside, become in some way less than I was before. And
no doubt through all this intricate discussion certain belittlements
have been acknowledged, though these have also been shown to lie along
the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both
negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the
subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This
is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from
our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause,
--these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it
which its practicers will recognize.
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