Sacrifice as distinguished from or opposed to the principle of _self_-sacrifice. Whilst self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, self-suppression--call it what we may--marks the crowning height of spiritual attainment, scaled alone by the few, and those the pioneers and saviours of the race, all early forms of religion bear witness to the existence of this belief in _sacrifice_--the propitiation of the Deity--as an element inherent in human nature, whether embodied in the legend of Polycrates, in the vow of Jacob at Bethel,[12] or in that condition of his descendants when in accordance with the prophetic denunciation[13] sacrifice had superseded mercy and burnt-offerings constituted a substitute for the knowledge of God. Again and again on different soil, amid men of alien races, the principle of sacrifice is found reappearing throughout history. As the enthusiasm of self-sacrifice becomes enfeebled, by a retrograde process of moral development the barren growth of sacrifice would appear to thrive. The echo of the unquestioning outcry, "God wills it," had died away when, in the crusading vows of the later era of the movement, expression was too frequently given to the theory of _sacrifice_. How far may the one be regarded as the outcome of the other, the higher the development of the lower instinct? When man has learned To know even hate is but a mask of love's To see a good in evil, and a hope In ill-success;[14] then, too, may the links between sacrifice and self-sacrifice become apparent. Along this line of connection we have to pass in traversing the ground between _Caliban_ and _Easter Day_. And what place does the creed of the unwilling slave of Setebos accord to the _life beyond the grave_? Will the future, if future there be, prove but an indefinite prolongation of the present? From the evils of this life the groveller in the mud sees no escape. He has discarded that tenet of his mother's creed which included a theory of retribution after death when Setebos "both plagued enemies and feasted friends." Such theory would indeed have been wholly inconsistent with that which represented the god as indifferent to his creatures, as utterly capricious in his dealings for good or ill--whereby he may be said to have neither enemies nor friends. No, poor Caliban, brutal and selfish, can but hold that "with the life, the pain shall stop." What satisfaction to be derived from the continuance of a loveless existence? Without love, life to the author of _Caliban upon Setebos_ would have lost its use, would be fearful of contemplation; the "can it be, and must, and will it?" of _La Saisiaz_[15] finds no faintest echo on Prospero's isle. In the one case the utterances are the utterances of Caliban, in the other those of Browning himself. From the calculations of the one the doctrine of immortality is as inevitably excluded as it is inevitably included in those of the other.