Moreover, an ethical naturalist can also accomplish much in _self-denial_: he can make many great sacrifices, if he can thereby reach a desirable end that cannot be reached without acts of self-denial; he can show great strength and patience in a resigned endurance of the inevitable; and if we take into consideration the possibility of its being logically at variance with his system, he may perform all that which the highest morality requires. But a renunciation which is more than silent resignation, and which under certain circumstances can also become a joyful renunciation of all that was beloved and dear to man on earth, does not grow out of the soil of naturalism, and is possible only there where man carries in himself a possession which would render him still more fortunate and happy than the idea of species, and where he knows the cross of Jesus, and understands the word of the Lord: "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it." Strauss is a striking proof that naturalism is not able to estimate the tasks of self-denial at their full importance. In his "The Old Faith and the New," although he speaks with great earnestness of moral demands, yet he deeply degrades that which is connected with a Christian renunciation of self and the world, when he reproaches Christianity with "a thorough cult of poverty and _mendicity_" (!) and, regarding its demand for self-denial, he denies that it has any comprehension of the tasks of {395} industry, of the virtues of home and family life, of patriotism and civil virtue.