Now, in seeking to benefit one's neighbor, how difficult it is to do one's duty!  Unless you give up all thought of self and, so to speak, get out of yourself, you will accomplish nothing here.  For how can you perform those works which Paul teaches to be the works of love, unless you renounce yourself, and give yourself wholly to others?  "Love," he says, "is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, is not envious or puffed up, does not seek its own, is not irritable,"  etc.  If this is the one thing required-that we seek not what is our own-still we shall do no little violence to nature, which so inclines us to love of ourselves alone that it does not easily allow us to neglect ourselves and our possessions in order to look after another's good, nay, to yield willingly what is ours by right and resign it to another.