The things best worth having, it is claimed, do not admit of being competed for. [Footnote: GREEN, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Sec Sec 244- 245.] If my aim is unselfish devotion to humanity, how can I lose if my neighbor attains in the same running? Do virtuous men, in so far as they are virtuous, stand in each other's light? Are there not as many prizes as there are competitors? As long as I remain in this field I may seek self-satisfaction without scruple. I satisfy another's desire in satisfying my own. By benevolence I lose nothing. The list of things which one may forego without self-sacrifice has been made a long one. Even the realization of capacities highly valued by cultivated men has been brought into it: "No conflict," writes Professor Seth, [Footnote: _A Study of Ethical Principles_, Part II, chapter ii, Sec 4, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 286.] "is possible between the ends of the individual and those of society. The individual may be called upon to sacrifice, for example, his opportunity of esthetic or intellectual culture; but in that very sacrifice lies his opportunity of moral culture, of true self-realization." 128. CAN MORAL SELF-SACRIFICE BE A DUTY?--To this position one is tempted to demur until two questions have found a satisfactory answer: 1. Is it true that there is no sacrifice of self-realization or self- satisfaction, properly so called, where all other desires and impulses are sacrificed to the one desire to do right? 2. Is it not conceivable, at least, that obedience to an unselfish impulse may result even in the sacrifice of the opportunities of moral culture in general? Can it, then, be called self-realization? Touching the first question it may plausibly be maintained that the desires of the self are many and various, and that the satisfaction of an altruistic impulse may imply the sacrifice of so many of them that the self may very doubtfully be said to attain to permanent satisfaction when the impulse is realized. Aristotle's hero, who, in dying for his country, chooses the more "honorable" for himself, [Footnote: _Ethics_, Book IX, chapter viii, Sec 12.] can hardly be said in that one act to have accomplished a state of permanent satisfaction or well-being for the self whose being was, in that act, brought to an abrupt termination. Certain Stoics seem to have taught that virtue is its own adequate reward and that nothing else matters; but this has not been the verdict of moralists generally. Paley, who writes like an unblushing egoist, [Footnote: See Sec 96.] we may pass over; but even Kant, a thinker of a very different complexion, appears to regard the mere doing of a right act as not a sufficient reward for the doer. He looks for the act to be crowned with happiness in a life to come, thus saving it from being mere self- sacrifice.