Sacrifice 33 



ideas. They are often irksome to him. They form a 

 sort of spiritual tyranny. Why? Simply because, 

 like all the unseen forces which militate against his 

 survival, they seem to demand sacrifice. The evolu- 

 tion of a mother willing to sacrifice even her life, if 

 necessary, for the sake of her offspring, is followed 

 naturally by the evolution of a father, influenced by her 

 example, and ready to lay aside the purely selfish instinct 

 of self-preservation in order to preserve the life of 

 his family. Push the investigation one step further 

 into the family clan and you have loyalty to tribe, 

 whereby individual members sacrifice their lives for 

 the preservation of the clan. Another step brings you 

 to the idea of the nation, with its militant patriotism. 

 Still another step introduces you to the idea of race and 

 race loyalty. In all these enlarged stages of man's 

 upward progress, his struggle for existence becomes 

 widened, through fear and love, from a purely personal 

 struggle for self to a struggle for others as well, in 

 family, community, national and race life. In all these 

 successive, or concurrent, steps there is the same fun- 

 damental idea, that of sacrificing the personal to the 

 general, the present to the future, which in reality 

 seems to form the basis of all moral ideas. In other 

 words, a very tangible, present, personal advantage is 

 given up for a possible future benefit to family, clan, 

 nation, or race. Selfishness gives place to altruism. 

 The regard of and for others, in short, becomes man's 

 creed of moral and religious duty. 



