VIOLET. Giving up one's tastes, one's feelings, one's time, one's
happiness, and so on, to make others happy.
L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who expects you to
make him happy in that way.
VIOLET (hesitating). In what way?
L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, and
happiness.
VIOLET. No, no, I don't mean that; but you know, for other people,
one must.
L. For people who don't love you, and whom you know nothing about?
Be it so; but how does this "giving up" differ from suicide then?
VIOLET. Why, giving up one's pleasures is not killing one's self?
L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; neither is it self-sacrifice,
but self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you
surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither: you may
as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your
eyes will soon be unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck
them out. And to maim yourself is partly to kill yourself. Do but
go on maiming, and you will soon slay.
VIOLET. But why do you make me think of that verse then, about the
foot and the eye?
L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, if foot
or eye offend you; but why SHOULD they offend you?
VIOLET. I don't know; I never quite understood that.
L. Yet it is a sharp order; one needing to be well understood if
it is to be well obeyed! When Helen sprained her ankle the other
day, you saw how strongly it had to be bandaged; that is to say,
prevented from all work, to recover it. But the bandage was not
"lovely."
VIOLET. No, indeed.
L. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake-bitten,
instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut it off. But
the amputation would not have been "lovely."
VIOLET. No.
L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you,--if the
light that is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief,
or are taken in the snare,--it is indeed time to pluck out, and
cut off, I think: but, so crippled, you can never be what you
might have been otherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or
maimed; and the sacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary.
VIOLET (after a pause). But when one sacrifices one's self for
others?