Chapter 22: Asceticism

1. The Cult of Self-Torture

Deeply embedded in the Christian ethical tradition -- in fact, deeply embedded in nearly every ethical tradition that rests on a religious foundation, is a broad vein of asceticism. So deep does this go that even today a "moralist" is usually thought of as a killjoy, and most writers on ethics are at best rather patronizing toward pleasure and seem fearful of repudiating the ascetic principle except in its more extreme forms.

Jeremy Bentham scandalized most of his contemporaries by his open derision of the principle of asceticism. He defined it as "that principle which, like the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; but in an inverse manner: approving of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness; disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it. It is evident that any one who reprobates any the least particle of pleasure, as such, from whatever source derived, is pro tanto a partisan of the principle of asceticism." (1)

And he went on to ridicule its logical basis:

Ascetic is a term that has been sometimes applied to Monks. It comes from a Greek word which signified exercise. The practices by which Monks sought to distinguish themselves from other men were called Exercises. These exercises consisted in so many contrivances they had for tormenting themselves. By this they thought to ingratiate themselves with the Deity. For the Deity, said they, is a Being of infinite benevolence: now a Being of the most ordinary benevolence is pleased to see others make themselves as happy as they can: therefore to make ourselves as unhappy as we can is the way to please the Deity. If any body asked them, what motive they could find for doing all this? Oh! said they, you are not to imagine that we are punishing ourselves for nothing: we know very well what we are about. You are to know, that for every grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a hundred grains of pleasure by and by. The case is, that God loves to see us torment ourselves at present: indeed he has as good as told us so. But this is done only to try us, in order just to see how we should behave: which it is plain he could not know, without making the experiment. Now then, from the satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can make ourselves in this present life, we have a sure proof of the satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life to come. (2)

Asceticism, when it is carried to its logical conclusion, can only result in suicide, or voluntary death. No man can suppress all his desires. Unless he keeps at least the desire for food and drink, or "consents" to take them, he can survive only a few days. The ascetic who constantly flagellates himself renders himself even unfit for work, by exhausting his body and mind. He must then depend for survival upon the generosity of others who consent to give him alms. But this means that the ascetic can survive only because asceticism is not obligatory upon everybody. Others must work productively so that he may live on part of what they produce. And as the ascetic must not only tolerate but even depend on nonascetics for survival, asceticism must develop a dual morality, one for saints and one for worldlings, that splits ethics in two. If ascetics suppress all sexual desires, they must depend on others to keep the human race from dying out. (3)

But though only a few have been able to carry the ascetic principle to its logical conclusion, and then only in the last week of their lives, many have succeeded in carrying it to fantastic and incredible lengths. Let us listen to the account that Lecky gives of the "ascetic epidemic" that swept over the Christian world during the fourth and fifth centuries:

There is, perhaps, no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a thrill of admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of muddy water; another, who lived in a hole and never ate more than five figs for his daily repast; a third, who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin "like a pumice stone," and whose merits, shown by these austerities, Homer himself would be unable to recount. For six months, it is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his body naked to the stings of venomous flies. He was accustomed to carry about with him eighty pounds of iron. His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well. St. Sabinus would only eat corn that had become rotten by remaining for a month in water. St. Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down when he slept, which last penance was also during fifteen years practised by St. Pachomius. Some saints, like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger. Of one of them it is related that his daily food was six ounces of bread and a few herbs; that he was never seen to recline on a mat or bed, or even to place his limbs easily for sleep; but that sometimes, from excess of weariness, his eyes would close at his meals, and the food would drop from his mouth. Other saints, however, ate only every second day; while many, if we could believe the monkish historian, abstained for whole weeks from all nourishment. St. Macarius of Alexandria is said during an entire week to have never lain down, or eaten anything but a few uncooked herbs on Sunday. Of another famous saint, named John, it is asserted that for three whole years he stood in prayer, leaning upon a rock; that during all that time he never sat or lay down, and that his only nourishment was the Sacrament, which was brought him on Sundays. Some of the hermits lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while others found a congenial resting-place among the tombs. Some disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair. In Mesopotamia, and part of Syria, there existed a sect known by the name of "Grazers," who never lived under a roof, who ate neither flesh nor bread, but who spent their time for ever on the mountain side, and ate grass like cattle. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul. And the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet. The less constant St. Poemen fell into this habit for the first time when a very old man, and, with a glimmering of common sense, defended himself against the astonished monks by saying that he had "learnt to kill not his body, but his passions." St. Abraham the hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly refused from that date to wash either his face or his feet. He was, it is said, a person of singular beauty, and his biographer somewhat strangely remarks that "his face reflected the purity of his soul." St. Ammon had never seen himself naked. A famous virgin named Silvia, though she was sixty years old and though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. St. Euphraxia joined a convent of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed their feet, and who shuddered at the mention of a bath. An anchorite once imagined that he was mocked by an illusion of the devil, as he saw gliding before him through the desert a naked creature black with filth and years of exposure, and with white hair floating to the wind. It was a once beautiful woman, St. Mary of Egypt, who had thus, during fortyseven years, been expiating her sins. The occasional decadence of the monks into habits of decency was a subject of much reproach. "Our fathers," said the abbot Alexander, looking mournfully back to the past, "never washed their faces, but we frequent the public baths." It was related of one monastery in the desert, that the monks suffered greatly from want of water to drink; but at the prayer of the abbot Theodosius a copious stream was produced. But soon some monks, tempted by the abundant supply, diverged from their old austerity, and persuaded the abbot to avail himself of the stream for the construction of a bath. The bath was made. Once, and once only, did the monks enjoy their ablutions, when the stream ceased to flow. Prayers, tears, and fastings were in vain. A whole year passed. At last the abbot destroyed the bath, which was the object of the Divine displeasure, and the waters flowed afresh. But of all the evidences of the loathsome excesses to which this spirit was carried, the life of St. Simeon Stylites is probably the most remarkable. It would be difficult to conceive a more horrible or disgusting picture than is given of the penances by which that saint commenced his ascetic career. He had bound a rope around him so that it became imbedded in his flesh, which putrefied around it. "A horrible stench, intolerable to the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed. Sometimes he left the monastery and slept in a dry well, inhabited, it is said, by demons. He built successively three pillars, the last being sixty feet high and scarcely two cubits in circumference, and on this pillar, during thirty years, he remained exposed to every change of climate, ceaselessly and rapidly bending his body in prayer almost to the level of his feet. A spectator attempted to number these rapid motions, but desisted from weariness when he had counted 1,244. For a whole year, we are told, St. Simeon stood upon one leg, the other being covered with hideous ulcers, while his biographer was commissioned to stand by his side, to pick up the worms that fell from his body, and to replace them in the sores, the saint saying to the worm, "Eat what God has given you." From every quarter pilgrims of every degree thronged to do him homage. A crowd of prelates followed him to the grave. A brilliant star is said to have shone miraculously over his pillar; the general voice of mankind pronounced him to be the highest model of a Christian saint; and several other anchorites imitated or emulated his penances. (4)

Lecky goes on to tell us that

... self-torture was for some centuries regarded as the chief measure of human excellence .... The hermit's cell was the scene of perpetual mourning. Tears and sobs, and frantic strugglings with imaginary daemons, and paroxysms of religious despair, were the texture of his life .... The solace of intellectual occupations was rarely resorted to. "The duty," said St. Jerome, "of a monk is not to teach, but to weep." ... The great majority of the early monks appear to have been men who were not only absolutely ignorant themselves, but who also looked upon learning with positive disfavor ....

Most terrible of all were the struggles of young and ardent men .... With many of the hermits it was a rule never to look upon the face of any woman .... [In the fourth and fifth centuries] the cardinal virtue of the religious type was not [Christian] love, but chastity. And this chastity, which was regarded as the ideal state, was not the purity of an undefiled marriage. It was the absolute suppression of the whole sensual side of our nature .... The business of the saint was to eradicate a natural appetite .... The consequence of this was first of all a very deep sense of the habitual and innate depravity of human nature; and, in the next place, a very strong association of the idea of pleasure with that of vice. All this necessarily flowed from the supreme value placed upon virginity .... (5)

Severance from the interests and affections of all around him was the chief object of the anchorite, and the first consequence of the prominence of asceticism was a profound discredit thrown upon the domestic virtues.

The extent to which this discredit was carried, the intense hardness of heart and ingratitude manifested by the saints towards those who were bound to them by the closest of earthly ties, is known to few who have not studied the original literature on the subject. These things are commonly thrown into the shade by those modern sentimentalists who delight in idealizing the devotees of the past. To break by his ingratitude the heart of the mother who had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him that it was her duty to separate from him for ever, to abandon his children, uncared for and beggars, to the mercies of the world, was regarded by the true hermit as the most acceptable offering he could make to his God. His business was to save his own soul.

The effect of the mortification of the domestic affections upon the general character [concludes Lecky] was probably very pernicious. The family circle is the appointed sphere, not only for the performance of manifest duties, but also for the cultivation of the affections; and the extreme ferocity which so often characterized the ascetic was the natural consequence of the discipline he imposed upon himself. (6)

2. William James for the Defense

In William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) we find further examples of asceticism, drawn, for the most part, from much later periods. James is almost as severe as Lecky in condemning self-torture in its more extreme forms. "Catholic teachers," he points out, "have always professed the rule that, since health is needed for efficiency in God's service, health must not be sacrificed to mortification." And he adds: "We can no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that God can take delight in the spectacle of sufferings self-inflicted in his honor is abhorrent." (6) But James defends asceticism in its milder forms and it may be instructive to examine his arguments.

His first defense rests chiefly on psychological grounds. The saint may find "positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism." (7) He later cites a striking example:

Of the founder of the Sacred Heart order . . . we read that: "Her love of pain and suffering was insatiable.... She said that she could cheerfully live till the day of judgment, provided she might always have matter for suffering for God; but that to live a single day without suffering would be intolerable. She said again that she was devoured with two unassuageable fevers, one for the holy communion, the other for suffering, humiliation, and annihilation. 'Nothing but pain,' she continually said in her letters, 'makes my life supportable.'" (8)

It is true that James treats this case as "perverse" and "pathological," but he does strongly commend a more "healthyminded" asceticism:

Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease....

Quite apart from the immediate pleasure which any sensible experience may give us, our own general moral attitude in procuring or undergoing the experience brings with it a secondary satisfaction or distaste. Some men and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles and the word "yes" forever. But for others (indeed for most), this is too tepid and relaxed a moral climate. Passive happiness is slack and insipid, and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. Some austerity and wintry negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency, and effort, some "no! no!" must be mixed in, to produce the sense of an existence with character and texture and power. (9)

No one can deny that this is psychologically true. But it is not, on examination, an argument in favor of real asceticism. It merely points out that men find their happiness in different ways. It is an argument only against a shallow and shortsighted hedonism that identifies "pleasure" with a mere sensual indulgence or foam-rubber comfort. It might even be considered a refined hedonistic argument for "asceticism," which counsels "austerity" in order to sharpen "the keen edge of seldom pleasure." It assumes, in other words, that one can maximize one's satisfactions and one's long-run happiness by some temporary deprivation, toughening, or struggle, or else what is gained, in James's own words, "comes too cheap and has no zest."

It is surprising to find how many of the ostensibly "anti-hedonist" arguments that fill the ethical textbooks really turn out, on examination, to be arguments in favor of more subtle, intelligent, and far-sighted ways of maximizing pleasure or happiness than those that the so-called "hedonists" are supposed to recommend.

But in addition to this psychological defense of "asceticism," James does undertake an ethical justification, which I think is worth quoting at some length:

Yet I believe that a more careful consideration of the whole matter, distinguishing between the general good intention of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of which it may be guilty, ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem. For in its spiritual meaning asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of the twice-born philosophy. It symbolizes, lamely enough no doubt, but sincerely, the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which is neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal to the soul's heroic resources, and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering....

Does not . . . the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the "spirit" of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not the exclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which most children are brought up today — so different from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical circles — in danger, in spite of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fibre? Are there not hereabouts some points of application for a renovated and revised ascetic discipline? ...

One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which infested it, there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May not voluntarily accepted poverty be "the strenuous life," without the need of crushing weaker peoples?

Poverty indeed is the strenuous life, -- without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circumlocutions; and when one sees the way in which wealth-getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be "the transformation of military courage," and the spiritual reform which our time stands most in need of.

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly, -- the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. (10)

Most readers will find it difficult not to feel a great deal of sympathy with this eloquent exhortation, though they may suspect that James has temporarily deserted the role of moral philosopher for that of preacher. When we examine his plea critically, we find a certain ambiguity in his use of the word "poverty" as well as in his use of the word "asceticism." Certainly it is hard to admire mere acquisitiveness, the pursuit of wealth simply for wealth's sake, or for the sake of mere comfort or, worse, of mere ostentation. But does this apply to the pursuit of wealth—at least of a competence—as a means to other ends? Is James advocating real poverty—the kind of poverty that means the constant pangs of hunger or actual starvation, lack of proper education or even proper nutrition for one's children, the inability to secure medical help for oneself or one's family when suffering pain or wasting away from some grave disease? Would this kind of poverty really "simplify and save" one's "inner life"? Or would it not tend rather to make the enrichment of one's inner life almost impossible?

A person with this kind of "voluntarily accepted poverty," moreover, is not in a very good position to be of much help to others; he is likely, on the contrary, when it comes to a crisis, to find himself dependent on the wealth-seeking neighbors whom he despises.

What James overlooked is that all honestly acquired wealth tends to be achieved in direct proportion to what a man contributes to production—to the production, that is, of the goods and services that his neighbors need or want. The phrase "money-making" is a misleading metaphor. What people (except counterfeiters) "make" or produce is not money, but goods and services that are sufficiently desired so that people are willing to pay money for them. The phrase "money-making" is apt to be applied to activities that one does not admire—perhaps because one does not understand the function they serve or the need for them. Good doctors, dentists, and surgeons all "make money"—usually in proportion to how good they are. This money is voluntarily paid. Would James have disapproved of such careers—or of the efforts of a man to make himself a better doctor, dentist, or surgeon in order to "make more money"?

In the cultural field, eminent pianists, violinists, opera singers, orchestra leaders, painters, architects, actors, playwrights, novelists, even psychologists, philosophers, and professors, "make money." But this does not mean that they are primarily engaged in money-making. And all of them make their money by rendering a service to others that others are willing to pay for. For many of them, as for a Henry Ford or a Thomas Edison, the money they make is merely a by-product of what they add to the community's amenities, satisfactions and progress. True, most people in our civilization never achieve eminence, and most of them are in humbler occupations that contribute nothing to "culture" but a good deal to the material basis without which culture would not be possible. A sensible man does not despise the baker, the butcher, the dairyman, the grocer, the trucker, or farmers because their activities have been undertaken to make money. In making money for themselves these people have been rendering essential services to him. So money-making, in the disparaging sense, is apt to be applied to activities of which the speaker does not approve, such as brewing or distilling, or of which he does not quite understand the economic purpose, such as stockbroking or advertising. The disparagers are apt to forget, also, that callings that seem dull to them are often intensely interesting to those who engage in them, and help to give excitement, color, and flavor to their lives.

Finally, it seems inconsistent of James to praise "voluntarily accepted poverty" because it involves "the strenuous life" and to condemn money-making because it involves "scrambling" and "panting." This is really to condemn money-making as entailing much too strenuous a life. Could it not be that many people do in fact find in production and intense business rivalry the exercise for their talents, the outlet for their energies, the strengthening of their faculties, and the testing of their nerve, grit, and stamina that become for them "the moral equivalent of war"?

The moral philosopher should not attempt to impose his own merely personal preferences and values on others. None of us has the right to insist that other people must lead the kind of lives or pursue the special ends that would appeal to us. What the moral philosopher can do, qua moral philosopher, is to suggest that people ask themselves whether the kind of lives they are leading and the objectives they are pursuing are really most likely to promote their own happiness in the long run or the happiness of the community of which they are a part. Within these limits, everyone must decide for himself what kind of life or what objectives would be most likely to promote his own happiness. This is the realm of chacun d son gout.

3. Self-Restraint, and Self-Discipline

The ascetic ideal, however, is still reflected in most contemporary ethical theories. Let us see how it makes its appearance, for example, in the ethics of Irving Babbitt. (11) The whole emphasis of Babbitt is on the virtues of decorum, moderation, restraint, self-conquest, "the inner check," "the Will to Refrain." (12) But very little is said in answer to the natural question: To refrain from what? From doing good? From painting a great picture, composing a great symphony, discovering a cure for some dread disease?

The ideal of Virtue summed up in "the will to refrain," like the monkish and ascetic ideals of the Dark Ages, is essentially negative. Virtue is to consist in refraining from something. But virtue is positive. Virtue is not the mere absence of vice, any more than vice is the mere absence of virtue. When a man is asleep (unless he is a sentry on duty or otherwise in a position where he should not be sleeping) he cannot be said to be either virtuous or vicious. If, as Aristotle once put it, "The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons," (13) your "will to refrain" is only negatively useful to them. The element of truth in Babbitt's theory is an element that has been recognized, if not by Rousseauistic romanticists and the apostles of self-indulgence, at least by every intelligent utilitarian since Bentham. We must refrain from impulsive acts that may give us momentary pleasure at the cost of a more than offsetting disappointment, pain, and misery in the long run. Each of us, in brief, must practice self-discipline. This is unexpectedly but eloquently affirmed even by Bertrand Russell in a sketch of his friend Joseph Conrad:

He thought of civilized and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths. He was very conscious of the various forms of passionate madness to which men are prone, and it was this that gave him such a profound belief in the importance of discipline. His point of view, one might perhaps say, was the antithesis of Rousseau's: "Man is born in chains, but he can become free." He becomes free, so I believe Conrad would have said, not by letting loose his impulses, not by being casual and uncontrolled, but by subduing wayward impulse to a dominant purpose....

Conrad's point of view was far from modern. In the modern world there are two philosophies: the one, which stems from Rousseau, and sweeps aside discipline as unnecessary; the other, which finds its fullest expression in totalitarianism, which thinks of discipline as essentially imposed from without. Conrad adhered to the older tradition, that discipline should come from within. He despised indiscipline, and hated discipline that was merely external. (14)

Self-discipline is certainly a major virtue, and a necessary means for most of the other virtues. But self-discipline is essentially a means. It is a confusion of thought to treat it as the end itself. Its value is largely instrumental rather than "intrinsic," derivative rather than independent. One refrains from sexual excesses, or excesses in smoking, drinking, or eating, in the interests of one's long-run health and happiness.

Anything that is so important as a means tends of course to be regarded also as an end in itself. And provided the primarily instrumental function of self-restraint or self-discipline is kept in mind, this does no harm. But when self-discipline is regarded as the virtue, when its pursuit becomes obsessive, it is in danger of being perverted into a form of asceticism.

There is, however, a twilight zone in which practical decision may be difficult. William James, in a famous passage of his Psychology, urged his readers to practice self-restraint in little "unnecessary" things to develop the moral strength and the habit:

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.(15)

This is bracing and altogether admirable advice for the young, and probably essential to a good moral education. But when the character has been formed, and one has reached middle age, I doubt the necessity of being ascetic or heroic in "unnecessary" points. If one gets up every morning early enough to catch the 8:05, showers, shaves, and does one's other necessary morning chores, puts in a full day's work at a job sufficiently arduous to be lucrative, keeps one's appointments and other promises, keeps regular hours, doesn't indulge excessively in drinking or smoking, eats moderately, stays away from foods that one can't digest or that lead to overweight or excessive cholesterol, does enough exercise to keep fit and prevent flabbiness, one is doing a good deal. The Lord will not blame you too much for not looking around for little "unnecessary" deprivations simply in order to develop your moral muscles.

We may agree with William James, in brief, in regarding self-discipline as, so to speak, a form of moral insurance, but this is no reason for paying an excessive insurance premium. James frequently used the word "asceticism" when he did not mean real asceticism but only self-discipline or self-toughening -- what might better be called athleticism. Let us say, for clarity of concept and definition, that any voluntary deprivation or exertion that undermines one's health and strength is really asceticism, but any voluntary deprivation, exercise, or exertion that increases one's health, strength and hardihood is not asceticism but athleticism or self-discipline.

In sum: We practice self-restraint, we refuse to yield to every impulse or passion or animal appetite, not for the sake of sacrifice itself, but only in the interests of our health, happiness, and well-being in the long run.

As Ludwig von Mises has put it:

To act reasonably means to sacrifice the less important to the more important. We make temporary sacrifices when we give up small things to obtain bigger things, as when we cease to indulge in alcohol to avoid its physiological after-effects. Men submit to the effort of labor in order that they may not starve.

Moral behavior is the name we give to the temporary sacrifices made in the interests of social cooperation, which is the chief means by which human wants and human life generally may be supplied. All ethics are social ethics.... To behave morally, means to sacrifice the less important to the more important by making social co-operation possible.

The fundamental defect of most of the anti-utilitarian systems of ethics lies in the misconstruction of the meaning of the temporary sacrifices which duty demands. They do not see the purpose of sacrifice and foregoing of pleasure, and they construct the absurd hypothesis that sacrifice and renunciation are morally valuable in themselves. They elevate unselfishness and self-sacrifice and the love or compassion which lead to them, to absolute moral values. The pain that at first accompanies the sacrifice is defined as moral because it is painful—which is very near asserting that all action painful to the performer is moral.

From the discovery of this confusion we can see why various sentiments and actions which are socially neutral or even harmful come to be called moral....

Man is not evil merely because he wants to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain -- in other words, to live. Renunciation, abnegation, and self-sacrifice are not good in themselves ... (16)