Men do actually strive to realize their desires--a desire is nothing else than such a striving for realization or satisfaction. But it cannot be said that men generally strive to realize their capacities, except to the limited degree in which their capacities may happen to be expressed in actual desires. Capacities may lie dormant, and the man in whom they lie dormant need not on that account feel dissatisfied, as does the man whose desires are not realized. Self-realization, as understood by the school of thinkers which advocates it, implies much more than the satisfaction of desire. It implies the multiplication of desires and their satisfaction. On what ground shall we persuade the contented egoist, who has but a handful of commonplace desires and finds it possible to satisfy most of them, that it is better to call into being a multitude of wants many of which will probably remain unrealized? He may point out that the divine discontent is apt to leave the idealist and the reformer as lean as Cassius. All of which does not prove that the self-realizationist is not right in exhorting men to develop their capacities in the direction of the pattern which he holds in view; but it does seem to prove that the path to self-realization, in this sense, is not necessarily the path to self-satisfaction. "The good" has come to mean more than that which satisfies desire. How shall we persuade men that it is their duty to make this good their end? 126. THE PROBLEM OF SELF-SACRIFICE.--As for the second point. He who makes his moral aim self-satisfaction can scarcely be expected to advocate self-sacrifice. Accordingly, we find among self-realizationists, a tendency to repudiate altogether what may properly be called self-denial. "Anything conceived as good in such a way that the agent acts for the sake of it," said Green, [Footnote: Prolegomena, Sec 92.] "must be conceived as his own good." "A moment's consideration will show," writes Professor Fite, in his clear and attractive book, [Footnote: An Introductory Study of Ethics, chapter viii, Sec 5.] "that, for self-sacrifice in any absolute sense, no ground of obligation is conceivable. Unless I am in some way interested in the object [Footnote: I.e., unless I desire the object.] whose attainment is set before me as a duty, it seems to be psychologically impossible that I should ever strive for it."