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!

L. I mean, and always have meant, simply this, Dora;—­that the will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each other’s happiness, and life; not by each other’s misery, or death.  I made you read that verse which so shocked you just now, because the relations of parent and child are typical of all beautiful human help.  A child may have to die for its parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for them;—­that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the arrow in the hand of the giant.  So it is in all other right relations.  Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow.  They are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other.