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? L. Why not rather others for you? VIOLET. Oh! but I couldn't bear that. L. Then why should they bear it? DORA (bursting in, indignant). And Thermopylae, and Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah's daughter? L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the Samaritan woman's son? DORA. Which Samaritan woman's? L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29. DORA (obeys). How horrid! As if we meant anything like that! L. You don't seem to me to know in the least what you do mean, children. What practical difference is there between "that," and what you are talking about? The Samaritan children had no voice of their own in the business, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl was certainly neither boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference in the dramatic effect; not in the principle. DORA (biting her lip). Well, then, tell us what we ought to mean. As if you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this moment, more than we do, if you wouldn't be tiresome!