Part 47

“Surely,” said I, “and so with goodness. Each man has his own particular goodness, according to his circumstances and nature. But, just as a beautiful picture is eternally beautiful, so goodness in the past, though it no longer seems good to us for practice, is always delightful to think of, though it would be horrible to imitate. For instance, the self-imposed poverty of St. Francis of Assisi.”

We spoke of asceticism and the ideals of self-sacrifice, and then of self-sacrifice itself, as preached in our own lives.

“In the first place,” I said, “we must get clear in our minds the meaning of happiness. People will say to you again and again that the aim of life is happiness. But if each one of us were to speak of happiness, and use the same word, we would each mean something different. Now, what is happiness?”

“It is having fun,” said Virginia.

“Yes,” I said, “that is all right. But that’s only repeating the same thing. What is it that makes us happy?”

Florence answered: “Having what you like.”

“Yes,” I said, “but more than that. It is having what you want most. If you liked pie, but you liked ice cream better, then pie wouldn’t satisfy you, would it?”

“No.”

“What would?”

“Ice cream and pie both,” said Florence.

We decided, however, after some thought, that we would give up pie for ice cream. “And this,” I said, “is the meaning of self-sacrifice. It is giving up what we want for something we want still more. And as the thing we want most of all, and for which we would give up everything else, is complete harmony, sympathy and understanding, you see that in all our self-sacrifices we are giving up what we want for what we want still more. We are giving up our smaller for our larger self.”

“That is just what Booker T. Washington said at the lecture this morning,” Virginia went on. “He said he had never made a single sacrifice, but he had always done the thing he loved to do most. It is fun to do good. It makes us feel so virtuous. And we do it because we like most to see other people happy.”

“That is what I mean, Virginia.”

“I don’t think it is so, always,” said Ruth. “I think often people are just forced to give up things and sacrifice themselves, when they don’t like it at all.”

“That’s different,” I said, “if it is enforced. I meant voluntary self-sacrifice.”

“Even so,” she went on, “suppose you are going out somewhere, and you have to stay at home with some person who is ill, just because you are asked to do it. You don’t like it, but you do it, anyway.”

“Probably,” I answered, “you love that person and that person’s pleasure far more than you do, say, the theatre.”

“No,” said Ruth, “perhaps you don’t love the person at all.”

“But you love to feel virtuous,” Virginia said, “and all the time you stay at home you are saying bad things, mentally, about that person.”

“But you stay from choice, you please your bigger self and its demands for beauty,” I went on; “you give up what you want for what you want more.”

“Yes,” Virginia said, “for you would be uncomfortable and unhappy if you went.”

“You see how silly and childish it is,” I continued, “to give up anything for nothing, to deny yourself pleasures, to make sacrifices for their own sake. That is one of the false virtues which make people self-righteous, ‘goody-goody’ and ridiculous. I know a girl who gave up eating butter during Lent because she liked butter, and she thought it noble to deny herself.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, “and I know girls who won’t take sundaes during Lent, but drink sodas instead, because they like sundaes better.”

I read aloud to them a Ruskin quotation that Ruth had brought some time ago:

“Recollect that ‘mors’ means death, and delaying; and ‘vita’ means life, and growing; and try always, not to mortify yourself, but to vivify yourself.”

“You see,” I said, “I believe in being selfish, in the very largest sense. I believe the whole world, all that I know and love, to be my whole self, and I want to make that as good, as true, as harmonious as I can. What people usually call selfishness is only self-limitation, cutting yourself off.”

“Yes; it is making yourself little.”

“Exactly. Take selfish people, and you will find that they are not only making others unhappy, but making their own lives very small and narrow.”