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CS Lewis War and Peace
...we
have a duty to rescue a drowning man, and perhaps if we live on a
dangerous coast, to learn life-saving so as to be ready for any drowning
man when he turns up. It may be our duty to lose our own lives in
saving him. But if anyone devoted himself to life-saving in the sense of
giving it his total attention--so that he thought and spoke of nothing
else and demanded the cessation of all other human activities until
everyone had learned to swim--he would be a monomaniac. The rescue of
drowning men is then a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. A
man may have to die for his country: but no man must in any exclusive
sense live for his country. He who surrenders himself without
reservation to the claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is
rendering unto Caesar that which of all things most emphatically belongs
to God: himself (Weight 47).
