Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/211

 whole self. Ascetics have commonly renounced the family and all social and political relations, but they have done so in order to develop and assert the religious self, which for them was the widest and truest of all. Absolute self-denial is a contradiction in terms. When a man gives up everything for the sake of the kingdom of God, he does so because his self is wholly identified with the kingdom of God. He denies certain aspects of the self for the sake of the highest and most comprehensive self.

The moral ideal is the complete development and assertion of the highest and most comprehensive self, through loyal devotion to some worthy vocation. The moral ideal is thus self-assertion in the best sense; for the good man is he who does all in his power to develop and assert the comprehensive self, whether that be family or state or church, with which he has identified his nature. His own private self is felt to be a fragment, whose interests are not worth considering when they come into conflict with the good of the comprehensive self as a whole. In a well and worthily organised community the individual finds that by consulting the interests of the comprehensive self which we call family or church or state, he is at the same time satisfying his own interests, for these have been identified with those of the more comprehensive selves.

§ 4. Loyalty to Vocation. In thus being loyal to his vocation, he will frequently have to deny particular desires and inclinations. Self-denial (in the popular sense of the term) plays a most important part in the process of morality. The man who has