Often a great sacrifice of self now will mean that one will have little to give by and by, when the need may perhaps be larger. The self you have to give now is small. Why not make it larger before any complete self-surrender? We cannot give unless we have something to give. "If you would be a great giver," says one of our philosophers, "you must first be a great person." You dream of enriching the world with your life. Then make it a rich life.
A second fallacy often held is that obligations for which one is not likely to be called to account until the distant future are less binding than those which make their claim felt now. None of us acknowledge that we so regard duty; but if we do not, it is difficult to account for some of our actions. For the sake of fashion or of vanity modes of dress are often followed which are bound to result in impairment of health. Wrong habits of eating injure the digestion, late hours drain the vitality. Thus we buy present gratification at the cost of our future welfare. To no other class of persons is it as important to say this as to girls. Many a girl acts as if she believed that she would have no use for any health or strength after she was thirty years old, and so were willing to squander all she had in a few months or years. She should remember that she will need at least as much each year of her threescore and ten as she does this year. There will be people in the future to whom she will owe obligation, just as there are now, some of whom are yet unborn. When we are inclined to overwork, the same arguments should apply. Why spend one's self in a single effort? Why not take account of the work that must be done in future years? I have known short-sighted young people who spent their entire capital of health in getting an education, only to live thenceforth lives of impaired usefulness.
One of the questions which the most conscientious of us must constantly ask ourselves is to what extent we should share whatever material possessions we may have with those less fortunate than ourselves. The needy are all about us and the claims of suffering humanity are insistent. The call must not fall on deaf ears. For some this call has seemed so imperative as to make them surrender all they had for the sake of alleviating distress or of making life more worth while for a few of their fellow beings. Too many go to the other extreme and admit no obligation to their fellow men.