The Online Library of Liberty

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• Preface to Volume Ii
• Preface to Part Iv (when First Issued Separately)
• Part IV.: The Ethics of Social Life: Justice
• Chapter 1.: Animal Ethics
• Chapter 2.: Subhuman Justice
• Chapter 3.: Human Justice
• Chapter 4.: The Sentiment of Justice
• Chapter 5.: The Idea of Justice
• Chapter 6.: The Formula of Justice
• Chapter 7.: The Authority of This Formula
• Chapter 8.: Its Corollaries
• Chapter 9.: The Right to Physical Integrity
• Chapter 10.: The Rights to Free Motion and Locomotion
• Chapter 11.: The Rights to the Uses of Natural Media
• Chapter 12.: The Right of Property
• Chapter 13.: The Right of Incorporeal Property
• Chapter 14.: The Rights of Gift and Bequest
• Chapter 15.: The Rights of Free Exchange and Free Contract
• Chapter 16.: The Right to Free Industry
• Chapter 17.: The Rights of Free Belief and Worship
• Chapter 18.: The Rights of Free Speech and Publication
• Chapter 19.: A Retrospect With an Addition
• Chapter 20.: The Rights of Women
• Chapter 21.: The Rights of Children
• Chapter 22.: Political Rights–so-called
• Chapter 23.: The Nature of the State
• Chapter 24.: The Constitution of the State
• Chapter 25.: The Duties of the State
• Chapter 26.: The Limits of State Duties
• Chapter 27.: The Limits of State Duties–continued
• Chapter 28.: The Limits of State Duties–continued
• Chapter 29.: The Limits of State Duties–concluded
• Part V.: The Ethics of Social Life: Negative Beneficence
• Chapter 1.: Kinds of Altruism
• Chapter 2.: Restraints On Free Competition
• Chapter 3.: Restraints On Free Contract
• Chapter 4.: Restraints On Undeserved Payments
• Chapter 5.: Restraints On Displays of Ability
• Chapter 6.: Restraints On Blame
• Chapter 7.: Restraints On Praise
• Chapter 8.: The Ultimate Sanctions
• Part VI.: The Ethics of Social Life: Positive Beneficence
• Chapter 1.: Marital Beneficence
• Chapter 2.: Parental Beneficence
• Chapter 3.: Filial Beneficence
• Chapter 4.: Aiding the Sick and the Injured
• Chapter 5.: Succor to the Ill-used and the Endangered
• Chapter 6.: Pecuniary Aid to Relatives and Friends
• Chapter 7.: Relief of the Poor
• Chapter 8.: Social Beneficence
• Chapter 9.: Political Beneficence
• Chapter 10.: Beneficence At Large
• Appendices
• Appendix A.: the Kantian Idea of Rights
• Appendix B.: the Land Question
• Appendix C.: The Moral Motive
• Appendix D.: Conscience In Animals
• Appendix E.: Replies to Criticisms
• References

PART VI.

THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL LIFE: POSITIVE BENEFICENCE

CHAPTER 1.

Marital Beneficence

428. In the history of humanity as written, the saddest part concerns the treatment of women; and had we before us its unwritten history we should find this part still sadder. I say the saddest part because, though there have been many things more conspicuously dreadful–cannibalism, the torturings of prisoners, the sacrificings of victims to ghosts and gods–these have been but occasional; whereas the brutal treatment of women has been universal and constant. If, looking first at their state of subjection among the semi- civilized, we pass to the uncivilized, and observe the lives of hardship borne by nearly all of them–if we then think what must have gone on among those still ruder peoples who, for so many thousands of years, roamed over the uncultivated earth; we shall infer that the amount of suffering which has been, and is, borne by women, is utterly beyond imagination.

As I have before pointed out, this ill-treatment of women has been an unavoidable concomitant of the chronic struggle for life among tribes, which is still going on in some places and once went on universally (sec. 335). The brutality fostered in men by their dealings with enemies, necessarily operated throughout their daily lives. The weakest went to the wall inside the tribe as well as outside the tribe. Utter absence of sympathy made it inevitable that women should suffer from the egoism of men, without any limit save their ability to bear the entailed hardships. Passing this limit, the ill-treatment, by rendering the women incapable of rearing a due number of children, brought about disappearance of the tribe; and we may safely assume that multitudes of tribes disappeared from this cause: leaving behind those in which the ill-treatment was less extreme.

It must not be supposed, however, that the women who, throughout the past, had to bear all this misery, and in many places still have to bear it, were or are essentially better than the men. All along the brutality of nature has been common to the two; and, as we see in the love of torturing prisoners, is, among some of the North American tribes, even more pronounced in the women than in the men. The truth is simply that the unqualified and cruel egoism characterizing both, has worked out its evil results on those least able to resist. Hence the women have been compelled to carry all the burdens, do all the wearisome and monotonous work, remain unfed till their masters have satisfied themselves, and left to live on the remnants.

Only during these later periods of human history, in which the destructive passions have not been so constantly excited by the struggle for existence between societies, small and large, has the treatment of women slowly become less brutal; and only during this same period has there been growing up in men, a perception that women have certain special claims upon them, and a sentiment responding to the perception.

429. Perhaps, however, it is going too far to ascribe this softening of conduct to any consciousness of its propriety. Little by little character has changed; and the accompanying amelioration in the behavior of men to women, leading to gradual modifications of customs, has had no recognized sanction beyond the authority of these customs. Such and such privileges are now conceded to women, partly because immediate sympathy prompts, and partly because social conventions direct; but there is recognized in no definite way the true ethical basis for this better treatment.

In preceding chapters we have several times seen that beyond the equalization which justice imposes upon us, by putting to the liberties of each limits arising from the liberties of all, beneficence exhorts us to take steps towards a further equalization. Like spheres of action having been established, it requires us to do something towards diminishing the inequalities of benefits which superior and inferior severally obtain within their spheres. This requirement has first to be fulfilled in the relations between men and women. Leaving aside all questions concerning mental powers, it is undeniable that in respect of physical powers, women are not the equals of men; and in this respect are disadvantaged in the battle of life. It is also unquestionable that, as the bearers of children, they are placed at a further serious disadvantage–are from time to time in considerable measure incapacitated for using whatever powers they have. Nor can it be doubted that though on the man devolves the business of providing sustenance for the family, yet the onerous duties of the woman, in unceasing attention to children from morning to night day after day, tie her more closely to home, and generally limit individual development to a greater degree. The inequalities thus necessarily arising between the lives of the two sexes, men have to rectify as much as they can–are called upon to make compensations.

Thus the observances which characterize the conduct of men to women in civilized societies, are not, as they at first seem, arbitrary conventions. If not consciously, still unconsciously, men have in modern times conformed their behavior to certain well-authorized dictates of positive beneficence.

430. The ideas and sentiments which should regulate the relations between men and women at large, find their special sphere in the marital relation. Here, more than elsewhere, it is the duty of the man to diminish, so far as may be, the disadvantages under which the woman has to live.

During the early stages of married life this duty is usually well fulfilled. Save in the utterly brutal, the sentiment which unites the sexes ensures on the part of the man, at any rate for a time, a recognition of the woman's claim. Her relative weakness forms one element of attraction; and, by implication, there results the desire to shield off such evils as the relative weakness entails. But though the nature inherited from a ruder type of humanity has been rendered less exclusively egoistic, it eventually reasserts itself to some extent in a large proportion of cases. Frequently the solicitude at first shown, diminishes; and, occasionally, even the acts of consideration which custom dictates, come to be disregarded–sometimes with assignable excuse, and sometimes without excuse.

It is consequently needful that there should be kept in mind the true ethical basis for the sympathetic self-sacrifices required of men to women in general, and especially required of husbands in their behavior to wives. So long as the code of conduct which regulates the general relations of the sexes, and more especially the marital relation, is thought of as conventional in its origin, it is more apt to be disregarded than when it is seen to originate in that form of beneficence which seeks to make less unequal the lives of those to whom Nature has given unequal advantages.

The incidents of female life during the childbearing period, are such as from time to time demand special consideration. Perturbations of health, more or less marked, are ordinary concomitants; and with these there sometimes go mental perturbations. When recognized as accompaniments of the functions which bear so heavily on women, these are of course to be tenderly dealt with. There is a further more general effect liable to be produced, which, in some cases being misunderstood, undermines affection. As before indicated, the antagonism between reproduction and individuation not unfrequently causes in women a sensible diminution in mental activity. Intellectual interests which before marriage were marked, diminish or cease; and a highly cultured man, who had hoped for a wife's sympathy in his aims, finds himself disappointed. Hence, sometimes, an alienation leading to decrease of domesticity. But a beneficence of the enlightened kind, rightly construing this decline of brainpower, will not regard it with impatience but with regret: accompanied even with some extra sympathy, in consideration of the mental pleasures which are being lost.

431. Of course these self-sacrifices, small and large, which a husband is called on to make for a wife, are not without limit. While on the one hand the inherited moral nature, at present so imperfect, frequently causes on the part of husbands a neglect of those attentions which a due beneficence requires of them; on the other hand, this same inherited moral nature frequently causes insistence by women on undue claims. Something much beyond the normal compensation for feminine disadvantages is demanded and gained.

Not unfrequently a relation of this kind is established during a first pregnancy. At such a time exigeante behavior on the part of a wife cannot well be resisted. Any considerable mental agitation might have disastrous consequences; and the husband, fearful of such consequences, feels obliged to yield, however unreasonable the demand may be. Once initiated and continued for some months, the relative attitudes of the two tend to become permanent. This result is evidently most liable to occur where the wife is one for whom unusually large sacrifices ought not to be made–one whose inferiority of nature is shown by thus using her advantage.

What should be done in such cases it is difficult to say. The answer must vary with the circumstances. While pronounced supremacy of husband over wife is undesirable, still more undesirable is pronounced supremacy of wife over husband–more undesirable because woman is less judicially minded and more impulsive than man. Though the undue assertions of claims on the part of a wife cannot well be resisted under the circumstances in which they are probably first made, yet they may be resisted afterward, when possible mischiefs no longer threaten. And for the happiness of both they should be resisted. For since the masculine trait which above all others attracts women, and gives permanence to their attachments, is the manifestation of power, the lack of power shown by constant yielding to aggression, eventually becomes a cause of declining affection and diminished conjugal happiness. The truth that a woman often loves more a strong man who ill treats her than a weak man who treats her well, shows how great a mistake it is for a husband to accept a position of subordination.

But all questions of this kind which take their rise in a human nature not yet sufficiently civilized for harmonious domestic life, any more than for harmonious social life, must remain with very indefinite answers. Active sympathy, and the beneficence resulting from it, are requisite in both husband and wife; and lack of them in either must have evil results, not in any way to be remedied. All one may say is that the needful beneficence on the part of a husband should err by excess rather than by defect.

432. Of course marital beneficence should be reciprocal. Though it is owed in chief measure by husband to wife, it is owed in large measure by wife to husband. While there have to be made by her no compensations for relative weakness and vital disadvantages, yet a return for benefits and sacrifices received, has to be made in such smaller benefits and sacrifices as domestic life affords place for.

Indebtedness to the bread-winner has to be recognized, and in some measure discharged: the tacit contract implies this as a matter of justice. But beyond fulfillment of the tacit contract by due performance of necessary household duties, there is scope for beneficence in the multitudinous small acts which help to make a home happy. If, on the one hand, we often see among the least civilized of our people, husbands utterly regardless of their wives' claims, burdening them with labors such as are fit only for men, we often see on the other hand slatternly wives who, lounging at doors and spending their time in gossip, so neglect household work as to bring on continual altercations and domestic misery. Even among the well-to-do classes there are not a few married women who, now occupied in novel reading, now in visiting, now in fancy work, scarcely ever go into their kitchens, and delegate all their duties to servants. Beyond the efficient household administration demanded alike by justice and by beneficence, there needs on the part of a wife sympathy in a husband's interests and aims and anxieties. That this is spontaneously given to a large extent is true; but it is also true that there is frequently little or no attempt made to participate in his leisure occupations and tastes. The way in which girls who daily practice music before marriage, give up their music after marriage, exemplifies the failure in those small beneficences which due reciprocity demands.

433. Respecting all that part of good conduct in the marital relation which goes beyond the demands of justice–the tacit contract for fostering and protection on the one side and discharge of domestic and maternal duties on the other–it may be remarked that it should be spontaneous. As before said, beneficence when constrained ceases to be beneficence.

Unfortunately many of the observances prompted by kindness, become mechanical as fast as they become established; and in so doing lose much of that beauty they originally had. When what were concessions come to be claimed as rights, the pleasurable feelings on both sides which at first accompanied them, disappear, and are sometimes replaced by opposite feelings–the claiming of the assumed rights implies egoism, and the yielding of them is without sympathy.

Hence alike in the social relations of men and women and in the marital relation, it is desirable to maintain, as much as may be, the distinction between justice and beneficence; so that the last may continue to bear about it the aspect of a freshly prompted kindness which has not been counted upon.

Full beneficence in the marital relation is reached only when each is solicitous about the claims of the other. So long as there continues that common attitude in which each maintains rights and resists encroachments, there can never be entire harmony. Only when each is anxious rather to make a sacrifice than to receive a sacrifice, can the highest form of the relation be reached.

CHAPTER 2.

Parental Beneficence

434. Already in the chapter “Parenthood,” forming part of “The Ethics of Individual Life,” much has been said which might equally well or better have been reserved for treatment under the above title. But the conduct of parents to children has still several aspects, not included in that chapter, which remain to be considered here.

Speaking generally, we may say that parental conduct exemplifies beneficence more than any other conduct. Though in the relation of parent to child egoism now and then becomes more pronounced than altruism, and though there is such a thing as the selfishness of affection which sacrifices the higher interests of a child to gain immediate pleasurable emotion, yet there is here less need for emphasizing beneficence than there is for emphasizing certain restrictions upon it.

Thoughtless beneficence has to be replaced by thoughtful beneficence. In cases where there is an ungrudging supply of everything needful for bodily development, and a furnishing by proxy of all the requisite aids to intellectual development, there is often but a niggardly expenditure of the reflection and attention required for good management.

435. To the mass of people nothing is so costly as thought. The fact that, taking the world over, ninety-nine people out of a hundred accept the creed to which they were born, exemplifies their mental attitude towards things at large. Nearly all of them pursue mechanically the routine to which they have been accustomed, and are not only blind to its defects but will not recognize them as defects when they are pointed out. And the reluctance to think which they show everywhere else, is shown in their dealings with children. The tacit assumption is that when they have provided well for their physical needs, and delivered them over to teachers paid by themselves or by the public, they have done their duty.

But parental beneficence truly conceived includes more than this. Some parts of mental culture may rightly be deputed; other parts cannot. Though the later stages of intellectual education may with advantage be consigned to teachers, the earlier stages of it, as well as the education of the emotions during all stages, devolve on parents. They may here be aided by others but cannot properly be replaced by others. Even while yet in arms, the child looks for intellectual sympathy: thrusting something given to it into your face that you too may look at it; and when it reaches a conversational age, constantly adding to its statements the question “Isn't it?”–so showing its desire for agreement and verification. From parents more than from others should come the response to this intellectual need; and by parents more than by others should the normal process of instruction be based on the child's habits of inquiry. For parental affection, where it is joined with an observing and reasoning intelligence, will give an interest to this process of unfolding–a greater interest than can be felt by others. The eagerness for knowledge which every child shows by perpetual questions, parental beneficence will aim to satisfy: from time to time opening the way to new classes of inquiries concerning facts which a child's mind can appreciate. It may be said that a father after his business fatigues, or a mother in the midst of her domestic cares, cannot do this. But a very small amount of attention given daily will suffice to aid and direct self-development; and rightly cultured parents will find interest in watching the progress.

Still more is home regulation required for the right molding of character, alike in the earlier and in the later stages of education. If parental conduct has been what it should be, the reciprocal affection produced gives to a parent a greater power of influencing the emotions than can be possessed by anyone else; and a good parent will regard it as a part of daily duty to use this influence to the best purpose. Not by coercive methods will he proceed; for if a right relation has been established these will rarely be needed, but he will proceed by influence–signs of approval and disapproval, of sympathy and repugnance, given to actions which are now above and now below the standard. Where from the beginning there has been pursued a proper course, and where there is a due amount of that inventive thought required for adjusting modes of control to peculiarities of nature, moral education will cease to be a trouble and may become a pleasure.

But whatever may be the difficulties in the way, parental beneficence includes ministration to the minds of children as well as ministration to their bodies. If the young are to be reared into fitness for life, it is absurd to suppose that parents are concerned with one factor in the fitness and not with the other.

436. While parental beneficence usually falls far short of the requirement in some ways, it greatly exceeds the requirement in other ways; or rather, let us say, in other ways it prompts the giving of immediate happiness without due regard for remote happiness. Of course I refer to the practice, everywhere recognized and condemned, of “spoiling” children.

If it is the business of education to produce fitness for adult life, then it should make the life of early days simulate the life to be led in later days, in so far as to maintain, if not the same proportion, yet some proportion, between its labors and its pleasures. Doubtless early life, as being the time for growth and development, should differ from later life in the respect that more should be given and less demanded, both physically and mentally. But, nevertheless, there should from the first be initiated that relation between efforts and benefits which is to become pronounced at maturity. There should not be a perpetual giving gratification out of all relation to industry. A thoughtful beneficence will avoid a profuse ministration to childish desires.

Besides the mischief caused by too great a dissociation of benefits from efforts, there is often in modern times an accompaning mischief–not among the poorer members of the community but among those who have means. Various social pleasures which should be reserved for adult life, are provided in large amounts for children; and a necessary consequence is that adult life has much less to give them than it should have. In a rationally conducted education, the surrounding world and the incidents of every day, may be made to yield pleasures quite sufficient to fill the leisure parts of a child's life, without having recourse to many artificial pleasures; and a wise beneficence, by taking care fully to utilize these, will avoid the evil now frequently inflicted by indulgent parents, who make a son blasé before life in its full form has been entered upon.

437. Often where parental beneficence is adequate in all other ways, there remains a way in which it falls short. There is a lack of proper self-control in the proportioning of kindnesses and attentions to different children. This causes much mischief, of which there seems but little consciousness.

It is in the nature of things that there cannot be equal amounts of affection felt by parents for all their children. The law of the instability of the homogeneous shows itself in this detail as everywhere else. There is inevitably a gravitation toward inequality, and more or less of favoritism. Even from birth some children commend themselves less to maternal affection than others do; and the differences in the feelings drawn out toward them, once established, are apt to be increased by the differences of treatment which result, and the different amounts of responsive affection.

Here we are shown the way in which blind instincts, even of the altruistic kind, require to be checked and guided by the higher sentiments. For beneficence and justice alike dictate as near an approach as may be to equal treatment of children–that is, to equal participation in parental care and kindness. No one will question that, as a matter of justice, each child has as good a claim as another to those aids to development which parents are called on to yield; and it can scarcely be denied that such parts of parental conduct as exceed justice and pass into beneficence, should also be distributed with approximate fairness.

It is important that in this sphere the rule of the sentiments over the instincts should be strong; for immense mischiefs arise from favoritism in families. Parents in many respects high-minded, often inflict great cruelties on some of their children, to whom they show habitual indifference while daily lavishing affection on their brothers and sisters. It is no small thing to cast a gloom over all the years of a child's life. But beyond the direct evil there are indirect evils. The mental depression produced tends toward discouragement; and often causes intellectual inefficiency. The character is unfavorably modified by the awakening of antagonistic and jealous feelings. And there is a loss of that controlling power which is gained by a parent who has fostered sympathetic relations with a child.

In few directions is parental beneficence more called for than in resisting the tendency which inevitably arises to distribute kindnesses to children unequally.

438. The most injurious kind of ill-regulated parental beneficence remains to be named–an excess in one direction often associated with deficiencies in other directions. A father who has discharged his duties to children quite mechanically, taking no trouble about their mental culture, and giving to them throughout their early lives but little parental sympathy, has nevertheless devoted many years of untiring labor to accumulating a large fortune, which he bequeaths to them. Not, indeed, that he has been prompted wholly, or even mainly, by the wish to leave them well provided for. Often the purely egoistic desire to obtain the honor which wealth brings, has been the chief motive. But joined with this there has been the desire that his children shall have bequests which will enable them to live without labor and anxiety. In so far as this shows beneficence, it shows a mistaken beneficence.

Our existing social regime, with its vast amounts of property in relatively few hands, though a regime appropriate to the existing type of humanity, and probably essential to it, is one which we may rightly regard as transitional. Just as modern times have seen a decrease in those great political inequalities, and accompanying inequalities of power, which characterized earlier times; so future times will most likely see a decrease in those great pecuniary inequalities which now prevail. Having emerged from the militant social type, we appear to be passing through a social type which may be distinguished as militant industrialism–an industrialism which, though carried on under the system of contract, instead of under the system of status, is in considerable measure carried on in the old militant spirit; as, indeed, it could not fail to be, seeing that men's characters and sentiments can be changed only in the course of long ages. Though pecuniary inequalities–some of them perhaps not inconsiderable–may be expected to characterize the future, reasserting themselves after socialisms and communisms have temporarily triumphed; yet we may infer that under higher social forms and a better type of humanity, they will be nothing like so marked as now. There will be neither the possibilities nor the desires for accumulating large fortunes: decrease in the desires being, in part, caused by recognition of the truth that parental beneficence, instead of enforcing them, interdicts them.

For a man's children are injuriously influenced both by the hope that they will be enabled to live without labor and by the fulfillment of that hope. As indicated in the chapter “Activity” and elsewhere, there can be no truly healthful life if benefits are dissociated from efforts. The principle on which human beings, in common with all other beings (save parasites) are organized, is that sustentation shall be effected by action; and detriment results if the sustentation comes without the action. There is initiated a relaxation of the organic adjustments which, if continued generation after generation, will cause decay. There is no need to emphasize this. The demoralization caused by “great expectations” is matter of common remark.

While parental beneficence when it exceeds the normal requirement–that of fully preparing children for complete living, and helping them to make a fair start in life–is disastrous in the way pointed out, it is disastrous in another way. It generates in children thoughts and feelings profoundly at variance with the filial relation. The scene between Henry V and his dying father, when to Prince Henry's excuse for taking away the crown, “I never thought to hear you speak again,” the king replies, “Thy wish was father, Henry, to that thought”; may be taken as typical of the state of mind which is apt to arise where a father's death brings to a son great power or property or both. The well-recognized fact that between the existing owner of an entailed estate and the expectant owner, there commonly arises a certain silent jealousy, sufficiently proves this. Inevitably, therefore, one who accumulates a large fortune which at his death will pass to his children, who will simultaneously escape from tutelage, runs an imminent risk of raising in their minds the dreadful wish that he may die. Thoughts about the benefits which will come after his decease frequently suggest themselves; and though filial affection may be strong enough to repress them, they cannot be long absent, and must produce a chronic emotional conflict of a demoralizing kind.

In all ways is this common habit of providing largely for children maleficent rather than beneficent. Besides tempting them to inactivity and carelessness while they are young, and besides confirming these traits when they come into possession, thus making their lives abnormal ones, it is injurious alike to parent and to society. Entire absorption in business–an utter materialization of aims, while it dwarfs the parental life mentally, undermines it physically: bringing on ill-health, and an end earlier than is natural. At the same time the greed of property frequently prompts that merciless competition which, as we saw in a preceding chapter, not only inflicts misery on competitors needlessly, but entails social mischief.

Hence it is inferable that due regard for his own claims, for the claims of fellow citizens, and for social claims, should conspire with a far-seeing beneficence in preventing a parent from making his children independent.

CHAPTER 3.

Filial Beneficence

439. Many years of childhood have to pass before there can be entertained the thought of naturally derived obligations to parents–whether those which justice imposes or those which beneficence imposes. The obligation to obedience is indeed perpetually insisted upon; and while in some cases ignored, is, in other cases, duly recognized. But in any case it is conceived as established by arbitrary authority. There is little or no idea of its natural fitness.

Here and there, however, even before the teens have been reached, especially in families having narrow means, predominant sympathy produces a constant helpfulness–an endeavor to lighten the burdens which fall especially on the mother; and in such cases there perhaps arises the thought that such helpfulness is but a small return for the fostering care received in preceding years. But more generally this praiseworthy assistance is due to the direct promptings of affection, and resulting kind feeling, rather than to recognition of parental claims.

In many cases, however, and it is to be feared in the great majority, not even the approach to maturity brings any idea of filial gratitude, as sequent on the idea of filial indebtedness. Feeding, clothing, and education are accepted as matters of course for which no thanks are due; but rather there come half-uttered grumblings because many things desired are not supplied. When, occasionally during an expostulation, a father points out to a youth the sacrifices that have been made for his benefit, and indicates the propriety of recognizing them, and conforming to a reasonable parental wish if nothing more, silent admission on the youth's part of the undeniable fact, is often not accompanied by the feeling which should be produced. Parents are in most cases regarded as ordained fountains of benefits from whom everything is to be expected and to whom nothing is due.

And this is, indeed, the primitive relation. Throughout the animate creation in general, this is the connection between each generation and the next. With untiring energy and persistent care, parents rear offspring to maturity; and the offspring, incapable of conceiving what has been done for them, are also incapable of any responsive feeling. This brute form of the parental and filial relation, still, to a considerable degree, persists in the human race. Often at an age when they should be capable of complete self-maintenance, the young continually claim aid from the old; and express in no very respectful words their vexation if they do not get what they ask. Recognitions of the immense indebtedness of child to parent, and of the resulting duties, have indeed been occasionally expressed from the earliest ages; as witness the words of the Egyptian sage Ani:

“Thou wast put to school, and whilst thou wast being taught letters she came punctually to thy master, bringing thee the bread and the drink of her house. Thou art now come to man's estate; thou art married and hast a house; but never do thou forget the painful labor which thy mother endured, nor all the salutary care which she has taken of thee. Take heed lest she gave cause to complain of thee, for fear that she should raise her hands to God and he should listen to her prayer.”

[The Hibbert Lectures, 1879, by P Le Page Renouf, p. 102.]

But though theoretically admitted by all, the obligation of child to parent has been in fact but little felt, and is very inadequately felt still; and there is still a very inadequate consciousness of the duty of discharging it as far as possible.

440. Filial beneficence as currently conceived is not wide enough in its range. Except the utterly brutal, all feel that it is imperative to save parents from want or direct physical privations; but not many feel the imperativeness of those constant attentions, and small kindnesses, and manifestations of affection, which are really due. The reciprocity called for includes not material benefits only but moral benefits–such endeavors to make the old age of parents happy as shall correspond with the endeavors they made to render happy the early days of their children.

In few directions is existing human nature so deficient as in this. Though, among the civilized, the aged are not left, as among various rude savages, to die of bodily starvation, yet they are often left to pine away in a condition that may be figuratively called mental starvation. Left by one child after another as these marry they often come at length to lead lives which are almost or quite solitary. No longer energetic enough for the pleasures of activity and not furnished with the passive pleasures which the social circle yields, they suffer the weariness of monotonous days. From time to time there comes, now from one child and now from another, a visit which serves nominally to discharge filial obligation, and to still the qualms of conscience in natures which are sympathetic enough to feel any qualms; but there is rarely such an amount of affectionate attention as makes their latter days enjoyable, as they should be. For in a rightly constituted order, these latter days should bring the reward for a life well passed and duties well discharged.

Insistence on filial beneficence is a crying need; and there is no saying in what way it is to be met. It cannot properly come from the aged themselves, since they are to be the beneficiaries. From the young we cannot expect it in adequate measure, since the need for it implies their deficiency in the sentiment which makes it needful. And by the official ex pounders of rectitude the subject is but rarely dealt with, or is dealt with ineffectually.

If those who are appointed to instruct men in the conduct of life, fail properly to emphasize filial beneficence in the interests of parents, still more do they fail to emphasize it in the interests of the children themselves. Neglecting to enforce the claims of fathers and mothers on their offspring, they leave these offspring to suffer, in declining life, from the consciousness of duties unperformed, when there is no longer a possibility of performing them–leave them a prey to painful thoughts about the dreary latter days of those they should have tenderly cared for: dreary days which they begin to realize when their own latter days have become dreary.

CHAPTER 4.

Aiding the Sick and the Injured

441. Part of the subject matter of the preceding three chapters is included under the title of this chapter; for marital beneficence, parental beneficence, and filial beneficence, severally dictate solicitous care of any member of the family who is suffering from illness or from accident. In the natural order of things the house becomes at need a hospital and its inmates nurses.

Whether or not in respect of those outside the family group, beneficence requires that the sick and the hurt shall be succored, even at the risk of self-injury, it certainly requires that this shall be done inside the family group. If, as we see, the protecting of wife by husband is demanded as ancillary to continuance of species (since if the mother is unprotected the species must suffer), then, for the same reason, the care of wife when she is in any way prostrated is demanded. In like manner a reciprocal care of the breadwinner is called for as a condition to maintenance of the family. Still more obviously requisite is a diligent attendance on children who are ill: the obligation to nurse them being included in the general obligation to use all means of rearing them to maturity. Only in the case of afflicted parents having grown-up children, are we debarred from saying that the welfare of the species dictates the succoring of them. Here the fact that direct increase of happiness results from rendering the needful assistance, gives rise to the obligation.

As happens in the case of infectious diseases, obligations of this class have to be discharged, even at the risk of suffering and sometimes of death. Nature at large teaches us this lesson. Beyond the fact that among innumerable kinds of lower creatures, parental life is wholly sacrificed for the benefit of offspring, we see that among higher creatures the instincts are such as prompt, especially on the part of a mother, the facing of any danger for protection of the young: survival of the fittest has established this recklessness of evil. Hence it must be held that the risking of infection is ethically enjoined on a human mother: the only important check being the consideration that loss of life involves loss of ability to discharge obligations to the surviving members of the family. And there seems no reason why an equal obligation to meet the risk should not devolve on the father; unless it be that he has to provide the necessaries of life alike for the household at large and for its suffering member, and that his incapacity may bring starvation on all.

Are there any other checks to the self-sacrifices entailed on some of the family by the illness of another or others belonging to it? There are such other checks. A wise and duly proportioned beneficence does not countenance loss of the relatively worthy for preservation of the relatively worthless. Everyone can name persons wrecked in body and mind by cherishing invalid relatives–relatives who often thanklessly receive the sacrifices made for them. Here is a wife whose sole occupation for a decennium has been that of nursing a gouty husband; and who, as a result, dies of a worn-out physique before he does. Here is a daughter who, after many years' attendance on an invalid mother, is shortly after required to give similar attendance to an invalid aunt; and who, now that she has lived through these long periods of daily abnegations and wearisome duties, is becoming mentally unhinged. And here is a husband whose latter days are made miserable by the task of safeguarding, in his own house, an insane wife. Though in such cases (all of them occurring within my own small circle) beneficence demands great self-sacrifice, yet its dictates should be so far qualified as not to require that the lives of the healthy shall be lost in making the lives of the diseased more tolerable. Some compromise has to be made by which there may be achieved partial relief from the heavy burdens.

Especially is it proper that domestic invalids who make undue demands should receive a not unlimited attention. Often a whole household is subordinated to the exactions of a sickly member; and instead of gratitude there comes grumbling. This tyranny of the weak ought to be resisted. For the checking of their own egoism, as well as for the welfare of those around, the unreasonable sacrifices they continually ask should be refused. Such invalids are not only physically sick, but are morally sick also; and their moral sickness requires treatment as well as their physical sickness. Husbands in the decline of life who have married young wives, and presently make them little else than nurses–objecting even to have other nurses to share the labors with them–require awakening to a due sense not of others' duties to them but of their own duties to others. A man is not absolved from the obligations of beneficence because he is ill; and if he rightly feels these obligations he will insist that others shall not injure themselves for his benefit.

442. Concerning that wider beneficence which expends itself in care for sick persons not belonging to the family, it is difficult to say anything definite. Each case is rendered more or less special by the character of the patient and the circumstances; so that general propositions can scarcely find place. We may set down, however, the considerations by which judgment should be guided.

If, as all will admit, the care of one who is sick devolves primarily on members of the family group, and devolves secondarily on kindred, it devolves only in smaller measure on unrelated persons. These may rightly limit themselves to indirect aid, where this is needed and deserved. Only in cases where there are no relatives, or none capable of undertaking relatives' duties, does it seem that beneficence demands from unrelated persons the requisite attentions.

How far such attentions shall be carried must, again, be determined in part by thought of the claims arising from character and conduct. If, with Friendly Societies around him throughout life, the man who is at length taken ill, refused to make any provision against sickness, it cannot be held fit that his necessities as an invalid shall be ministered to as well as they might have been had he made such provision. If sympathy prompts an equal attention to the improvident as to the provident, the sentiment of justice puts a veto. Then, again, there is the question of character. If as much sacrifice is made for the sick good-for-nothing as is made for the sick good-for-something, there is abolished one of those distinctions between the results of good and bad conduct which all should strive to maintain. Further, there is the allied question of value. Much more may rightly be done for one whose abilities or energies promise public benefit, than for one who is useless to his fellow men, or is a burden on them.

Besides the beneficiaries, their characters and circumstances, there have to be considered the constitutions and circumstances of the benefactors. On those who have but little vitality and but small recuperative power after illness, a rational beneficence does not impose as heavy duties as it does on those in high vigor, who can bear disturbances of health without permanent mischief. Differences of claims hence arising, are seen to be greater on remembering that those with low blood pressure, are more liable to contract infectious diseases than those in whom the tide of life rises higher: especially when, as commonly happens, there is fear in the one case and not in the other. To the check which, for these reasons, a reasonable egoism puts upon altruism, must be joined a check of an altruistic kind; namely consideration for those on whom evils will be entailed by contracting an infectious disease, or an illness caused by exhaustion. These evils are of several kinds. One who, engaged in nursing a stranger, comes home to the family group with a fever, risks their health and life as well as her own. Moreover, she entails on them the troubles and anxieties attendant upon nursing her, as well as the moral pains which her sufferings and perhaps her death, produce. Even when a fatal issue is escaped, there is necessarily for some time an inability to discharge such obligations as she has ordinarily to discharge; and, occasionally, a permanent inability to discharge them. Evidently, then, while beneficence prompts such aid to sick persons who have no claims of relationship, as may be given without considerable risk, it does not dictate the giving of such aid by those who have family ties and important duties.

Nevertheless we must not ignore the fact that such aid may be, and often is, given without injury by those who, if the above reason is valid, ought to hesitate in giving it. In a way somewhat remarkable, medical men (taking, however, in most cases some precautions) daily visit patients suffering from fevers or kindred diseases, and but rarely take them. We must suppose that use, and perhaps an acquired mental indifference, unite to give them immunity; and yet, even if so, it is not easy to see how, during the earlier stages of their professional lives, they escape. Hospital nurses, too, apparently become impervious. So that the risks of evil run by those whose sympathies prompt them to adopt nursing as an occupation, are not so great as at first appears; and where the nursing is of those suffering from other than infectious diseases, it may be consistent with fairly good health.

That strange emotion, so difficult to analyze, the luxury of pity is an incentive to the sacrifices which nursing implies; and when with this there coexists a large share of the maternal instinct, which is in essence a love of the helpless, the care of the helpless sick becomes a source of subdued pleasure, which in large measure neutralizes the pain, and even makes the occupation a gratifying one. Without enjoining the beneficence which issues in these results, one may fitly look on and admire.

443. Though due regard for all circumstances puts some restraint on ministration to the sick who have no family claims, it puts no restraint on ministration to sufferers of another class–those who have met with accidents. Everyone is from time to time witness to injuries caused by falls, or by runaway horses, or by carriage collisions; and everyone is, in such cases, bound to render all possible assistance. None save those in whom the brutality of the barbarian still predominates, fail to feel contempt for the Pharisee in the parable and approval of the Samaritan.

But while the duty of caring for the injured is commonly recognized, as demanded even by the most ordinary beneficence, there is an ancillary duty which has only of late gained partial recognition–the duty of acquiring such knowledge and skill as shall make efficient the efforts to aid. Up to our own days, and even still in ninety-nine people out of a hundred, the wish to help the wounded or maimed is unaccompanied by instructed ability–nay, worse, is accompanied by an ignorance which leads to mischievous interferences. The anxiety to do something ends in doing harm; for there is commonly no adequate consciousness of the truth that there are many ways of going wrong to one way of going right.

Hence a provident beneficence suggests the acquirement of such surgical and medical knowledge as may be of avail to sufferers before professional aid can be obtained. Unqualified applause, then, must be given to those Ambulance Societies and kindred bodies, which seek to diffuse the requisite information and give by discipline the requisite skill. Unfortunately when there come the demands for the acquired knowledge and aptitude, the hoped for benefits are not always forthcoming: nervousness or indecision, or perhaps perplexity amid the various lessons which have been learned, leads to failure. Still, the inference to be drawn is not that such preparations for aiding the injured should be abandoned, but rather that they should be more thorough, and should in fact form a part of the education given to all.

CHAPTER 5.

Succor to the Ill-Used and the Endangered

444. In everyone who is capable of ethical ideas and sentiments, more than one kind of motive prompts the defense of those who are aggressed upon: especially when they are weaker than the aggressors. There cooperate an immediate sympathy with the pains, mentally or bodily, inflicted; a feeling of indignation against the person who inflicts them; a sense of justice which is irritated by the invasion of personal rights; and (where there is a quick consciousness of remote results) an anger that the established principles of social order should be broken. Whoever is civilized, not in the superficial sense but in the profound sense, will feel himself impelled to aid one who is suffering violence, either physical or moral; and will be ready to risk injury in yielding the aid.

The courage shown by one of those hired men who unite in conquering small semicivilized nations and weak, uncivilized tribes, is to be admired about as much as is the courage of a brute which runs down and masters its relatively feeble prey. The courage of one who fights in self-defense, or who as a soldier fights to defend his country when it is invaded, is respectable–is a proper manifestation of direct egoism in the one case, and in the other case a manifestation of that indirect egoism which makes it the interest of every citizen to prevent national subjugation. But the courage which prompts the succoring of one who is ill used, and which, against odds of superior strength, risks the bearing of injury that the weaker may not be injured, is courage of the first order–a courage backed, not as in many cases by base emotions, but backed by emotions of the highest kind.

One might have thought that even in a pagan society the ill-treatment of the weak by the strong would be universally reprobated. Still more might one have thought that in a professedly Christian society, general indignation would fall upon a bully who used his greater bodily powers to oppress a victim having smaller bodily powers. And most of all one might have felt certain that in educational institutions, governed and officered by professed teachers of Christianity, ever enjoining beneficence, ill-treatment of the younger and weaker by the elder and stronger would be sternly forbidden and severely repressed. But in our clerically administered public schools, the beneficence just described as of the highest order, finds no place; but, contrariwise, there finds place an established maleficence. Bullying and fagging, in past times carried to cruel extremes, still survive; and, as happened not long since, a resulting death is apologized for and condoned by one of our bishops. There is maintained and approved a moral discipline not inappropriate for those who, as legislators and military officers, direct and carry out, all over the world, expeditions which have as their result to deplete pagans and fatten Christians.

But though public-school ethics and, by transmission, the ethics of patriotism so-called, do not in practice (whatever they may do in theory) include that form of beneficence which risks injury to self in defending the weak against the strong, the ethics of evolution, as here interpreted, emphasize this form of beneficence; since the highest individual nature and the highest social type, cannot exist without a strength of sympathy which prompts such self-sacrificing beneficence.

445. And here, before considering the demands for self-sacrifice arising, not in the cases of injuries threatened by maleficent human beings, but in the cases of injuries threatened by the forces of nature, something should be said concerning the courage required for the last as for the first; and, indeed, frequently more required, since the forces of nature are merciless.

Very generally the virtue of courage is spoken of as though it were under all circumstances worthy of the same kind of applause, and its absence worthy of the same kind of contempt. These indiscriminating judgments are indefensible. In large measure, though not wholly, the development of courage depends on personal experience of ability to cope with dangers. It is in the order of nature that one who perpetually fails, and suffers from his failures, becomes increasingly reluctant to enter into conflict with either organic or inorganic agencies; while, conversely, success in everything undertaken fosters a readiness to run risks–sometimes an undue readiness: each fresh success being an occasion of extreme satisfaction, the expectation of which becomes a temptation. Hence, to a considerable extent, timidity and courage are their own justifications: the one being appropriate to a nature which is physically, or morally, or intellectually defective in a greater or less degree; and the other being appropriate to a nature which is superior either in bodily power, or strength of emotion, or intellectual aptitude and quickness. Errors of estimation in this matter may be best excluded by taking a case in respect of which men's preconceptions are not strongly established–say the case of Alpine explorations. Here is one who has constitutionally so little strength that he is prostrated by climbing two or three thousand feet; or whose hands are not capable of a powerful and long-sustained grip; or whose vision is not keen enough to make him quite sure of his footing; or who cannot look down a precipice without feeling dizzy; or who so lacks presence of mind that he is practically paralyzed by an emergency. All will admit that any one of these physical or mental deficiencies rightly interdicts the attempt to scale a mountain peak, and that to make the attempt would be a mark not of courage but of folly. Contrariwise, one who to strength of limb adds power of lungs, and with these joins acute senses, a clear and steady head, and resources mental and bodily which rise to the occasion when danger demands, may be held warranted in a risky undertaking; as, for instance, descending into a crevasse to rescue one who has fallen into it. His courage is the natural accompaniment of his ability.

Such contrasts of natures should ordinarily determine such contrasts of actions; and estimates of conduct should recognize them–should, in large measure, take the form of pity for the incapacities of one or other kind which fear implies, and respect for the superiorities implied by courage. “In large measure,” I say, because there are degrees of timidity beyond those which defects justify, and degrees of courage beyond those appropriate to the endowments; and while the first of these rightly deserves reprobation, the last may be duly admired, supposing it is not pushed to the extent of irrational imprudence.

Speaking generally, then, the sanction for courage must take into account the relation between the thing to be done and the probable capacity for doing it. The judgment formed must obviously vary according to the age–cannot be the same for the young or the old as for one in the prime of life; must vary with the state of health, which often partially incapacitates; must vary with what is called the “personal equation,” since, when in danger, slowness of perception or of action is often fatal. The single fact that heart disease produces timidity–a timidity appropriate to that inability which failure of circulation involves–suffices alone to show that, both in self and in others, the estimated obligation to run a risk must always be qualified by recognition of personal traits.

Even without taking account of such special reasons, there is, indeed, a prevailing consciousness that some proportion should be maintained between the degree of danger and the ability to meet the danger. It is usual to condemn as “rash,” conduct which disregards this proportion. The saying that “discretion is the better part of valor,” though by implication referring only to the risks of battle, is applicable to other risks; and implies that there should be not approval but disapproval if the danger is too great. Similarly the epithet “foolhardy,” applied to one who needlessly chances death or great injury, is an epithet of reprobation; and implies, too, the perception that not unfrequently a large part of that which passes for courage is simply stupidity–an inability to perceive what is likely to happen. There is in fact generally felt a certain kind of obligation not to risk life too recklessly, even with a good motive.

While the injunction uttered by positive beneficence to succor those who are endangered by the merciless powers of nature, must be thus qualified, it must, as we shall presently see, be further qualified by recognition of the collateral results, should the effort to yield the succor prove fatal.

446. From the general we may turn now to the special. Let us ask what is the obligation imposed by beneficence to rescue one who is drowning. In what cases is the duty positive, and in what cases must it be doubtful or be negatived?

Clearly a man who, being a good swimmer, has the requisite ability, and yet makes no effort to save the life of one who, at no great distance, is in danger of sinking, is not only to be condemned as heartless but as worse. If at small risk to himself he can prevent another's death and does not, he must be held guilty of something like passive manslaughter. The only supposable excuse for him is his consciousness that one who is drowning is apt to grapple his rescuer in such way as to incapacitate him, and cause the deaths of both–a liability, however, which he might know is easily excluded by approaching the drowning person from behind.

But what are we to say when there is less fitness in strength, or skill, or both, to meet the requirements? What if weakness makes long-continued exertion impracticable? Or suppose that though he has general strength enough, the bystander has not acquired an ability to swim more than fifty yards, while the person to be rescued is considerably further off. Or suppose that, the scene of the threatened disaster being the sea, the power of the breakers is such that once in their grasp there is small chance of getting out again: even alone, much less when helping one who is drowning. Here it seems manifest that however much an unthinking beneficence may prompt running the risk, a judicial beneficence will forbid. An irrational altruism has in such cases to be checked by a rational egoism; since it is absurd to lose two lives in a hopeless effort to save one.

Other restraints have usually to be taken into account. A man who is without a wife or near relatives, so that his death will inflict no great amount of mental suffering–a man who is not responsible for the welfare of children or perhaps aged parents, may fitly yield to the immediate promptings of sympathy, and dare to do that which should not be done by one whose life is needful to other lives. In such cases beneficence urges and beneficence restrains. Quite apart from the instinct of self-preservation, the sense of duty to dependents may forbid the attempt to give that succor which fellow feeling instigates.

So that nothing definite can be said. Save in the instances first indicated, where the obligation is manifest, the obligation must be judged by the circumstances of each case: account being taken, not only of the qualifications named, but the value of the person for whom the effort is made; for the same risks should not be run on behalf of a criminal as on behalf of one who is noble in character, or one who is highly serviceable to his society.

447. Difficult as are the questions sometimes raised in presence of probable death from drowning, they are exceeded in difficulty by questions raised in presence of probable death from fire. In the one case the ability of the rescuer, resulting from his strength, skill, and quickness, counts for much; and the actions of the element, now quiet now boisterous, with which he has to contend, may be fairly well gauged by him; but, in the other case, he has to contend with an agent the destructive actions of which are much more terrible, much less calculable, and not to be overcome by strength.

From time to time we read of those who, at the peril of their lives, have rescued relatives and even strangers from burning houses; and again we read of others whose efforts of like kind have proved fatal. Are we then, under parallel circumstances, to say–Go thou and do likewise? Does beneficence demand disregard of self, carried to the extreme that it may very likely end in the sacrifice of a second life without the saving of a first? No general answer can be given. The incidents of the case and the special emotions–parental, filial, fraternal, or other–must decide. Often the question is one which cannot be answered even if there is absolute self-abnegation; as when, having brought out a child from one room which is in flames, a parent has to decide whether to rush into an upper room and rescue another child, at the same time that fire on the staircase threatens death to all. Evidently in such a chaos of conditions and feelings and obligations and risks, nothing can be said. And what is true in this extreme case is true in a large proportion of the cases. Ethics is dumb in presence of the conflicting requirements.

When not the life of the rescuer only is concerned, but when loss of his life must make other lives miserable, and leave grave obligations undischarged, interdict rather than injunction may be the ethical verdict.

448. Doubtless it is well for humanity at large to maintain the tradition of heroism. One whose altruistic promptings are so strong that he loses his own life in an almost hopeless effort to save another's life, affords an example of nobility which, in a measure, redeems the innumerable cruelties, brutalities, and meannesses, prevailing among men, and serves to keep alive hope of a higher humanity hereafter. The good done in occasionally putting egoism to the blush, may be counted as a setoff against the loss of one whose altruistic nature should have been transmitted.

But in all questions of the kind dealt with in this chapter, we may fitly fall back on the ancient doctrine of the mean. When throwing dice with death, the question whether death's dice are loaded may fitly be asked. Even the extreme maxim “Love thy neighbor as thyself” does not imply that each should value his own life at a less rate than that of another. Hence it seems inferable that though positive beneficence enjoins succoring the endangered where there seems an overbalancing probability that life will be saved, it does not enjoin more than this.

CHAPTER 6.

Pecuniary Aid to Relatives and Friends

449. A curious change of sentiments has accompanied a curious change of obligations, during the transition from that ancient type of social structure in which the family is the unit of composition to that modern type in which the individual is the unit of composition. The state of things still existing among the native Australians, under which the guilt of a murderer is shared in by all his kindred, who severally hold themselves subject to vengeance–the state of things which, throughout Europe in early days, made the family or clan responsible for any crime committed by one of its members, seems strange to us now that we have ceased to bear the burdens, criminal or other, not only of our remote relatives but even of our near relatives.

From one point of view the ancient system seems ethically superior–seems more altruistic. From another point of view, however, it is the reverse; for it goes along with utter disregard of, and very often enmity to, those not belonging to the family group. The modern system, while it does not recognize such imperative claims derived from community of blood, recognizes more than the old, claims derived from community of citizenship, and also claims derived from community of human nature. If we bear in mind that the primary ethical principle is that each individual shall experience the effects of his own nature and consequent conduct, and that under the ancient system sundry effects of his conduct were visited as readily on his relatives as on himself, whereas, under the modern system, they are visited on himself only; we shall infer that the modern system is the higher of the two. And we shall infer this the more readily on remembering that it is accompanied by a more equitable political regime, and consequent social ameliorations.

Acceptance of this inference will guide our judgments respecting obligations to assist relatives. The claims of immature children on parents, are directly deducible from the postulate that continuance of the species is a desideratum–a postulate from which, as we have seen, ethical principles in general originate. The reciprocal claims of parents on children are directly deducible from the position of indebtedness in which parental care has placed the children. But no other claims of relationship have anything like a fundamental authority. Community of blood arising from community of parentage, has not in itself any ethical significance. The only ethical significance of fraternity is that which arises from community of early life, and reciprocal affections presumably established by it. Brethren and sisters usually love one another more than they love those who are outside the family circle; and the accepted implication is that the stronger attachments which have arisen among them, originate stronger dictates to yield mutual aid. If, as is rightly said, relatives are ready-made friends, then children of the same parents must be regarded as standing in the first rank of such friends. But their obligations to one another must be held as consequent not on their common origin but on their bonds of sympathetic feeling–bonds made to vary in their strengths by differences of behavior, and which therefore generate different degrees of obligation.

This view, which will probably be dissented from by many, I enunciate before asking how far positive beneficence requires brothers and sisters to yield one another pecuniary aid. And I enunciate it the more emphatically because of the extreme mischiefs and miseries apt to result from the making and conceding of claims having no other warrant than community of parentage. Within these three years I have become personally cognizant of two cases in which, here impoverishment and there ruin, have been brought on sisters who have lent money to brothers. Ignorant of business, incapable of criticizing plausible representations, prompted by sisterly regard and confidence, they have yielded to pressure: being further led to yield by belief in a moral obligation consequent on the relationship. A rational beneficence countenances no such concessions. A brother who, in pursuit of his own advantage, wishes thus to hypothecate the property of sisters, who will grievously suffer should he not succeed, is a brother who proves himself devoid of proper fraternal feeling. The excuse that he feels sure of success is an utterly inadequate excuse. It is the excuse made by men who, to tide over emergencies, appropriate the funds they hold in trust, or by men who forge bills which they hope to be able to meet before they are due. And if in such cases it is recognized as criminal thus to risk the property of others on the strength of a hoped-for success, we cannot absolve from something like criminality a brother who, on the strength of a similar hope, obtains loans from trustful sisters. One who does such a thing should no longer be considered a brother.

But what is to be done when a loan is asked not from a sister but from a brother–a brother who has considerable means and is a competent judge? The answer here is of course indeterminate. The prospective creditor may in this case be capable of estimating the probable results–capable of estimating, too, his brother's business ability; and he may also rightly have such confidence in his own power of making money that he can reasonably risk a considerable loss. Especially if it is a case of difficulty to be met, sympathy may join fraternal affection in prompting assent. Even here, however, there may fitly be hesitation on both sides. Where there is in the matter an element of speculation, the one who needs money, if a conscientious man, will scarcely like to receive, much less to ask–will feel that it is bad enough to play with anyone the game “Heads I win, tails you lose”; and worse still with a brother.

450. Respecting those who are more remotely related or who are not related at all, much the same incentives and restraints may be alleged. If affection and fellow feeling, rather than common parentage or common ancestry, are the true prompters to needful monetary aids, then a friend with whom a long and kindly intercourse has established much sympathy, has a stronger claim than a little known relative, whose conduct has led now to disapproval now to dislike. Recognition of personal worth, or recognition of value as a citizen, may also rightly guide beneficent feeling to yield assistance where a difficulty, and especially an unforeseen difficulty, threatens evil. When it comes to the question of advancing means, not for preventing a probable disaster, but for entering upon some new undertaking, a longer pause for reflection is demanded. The worth and honesty of the borrower being taken for granted, there have still to be considered the amount of his energy, his appropriate knowledge, his proved capacity; and there have still to be considered the effects which will be felt should he fail. For the act must be considered from the egoistic side as well as from the altruistic side; and the degree of possible self-sacrifice may be greater than ought to be asked. Balanced judgments are in such cases hard to reach.

Much the same things may be said concerning that indirect hypothecation which consists in giving security. Here the difficulty of deciding is often greater; since there is no reply but either yes or no, and since the amount risked is usually large. Between a proper altruism and a reasonable egoism there is much strain in such cases. On the one hand, to negative the obtainment of some desirable post, which may be the first step towards a prosperous life, seems cruel. On the other hand, to risk the possible ruin which may come from yielding, seems something more than imprudent. A much greater power of judging character than is common must be possessed by one who can safely furnish a warrant for another's behavior. The incongruity between appearance and reality is often extreme; and there are but few adequately on their guard against it. Agreeableness and plausible professions usually attract a confidence which is repelled by a brusque sincerity that makes little effort to please; and trustworthiness is wrongly identified with the one rather than with the other.

But manifestly in such cases, as in preceding ones, the strongest restraint on a too easy beneficence is that which comes from due regard for the claims of dependents. One who, with exalted generosity, is ready to risk the wreck of his own life, is not warranted in risking the wreck of lives for which he is responsible. A judicial beneficence, weighing the possible future mischiefs to others against the present benefit to one, will usually see reason to resist the pressure.

In these days, however, such considerations scarcely need setting down; for now that the principle of insurance has been extended to the giving of security for good behavior on payment of an annual sum, no right-minded man will think of asking a friend to become security for him. Anyone who now asks another thus to endanger himself, is thereby proved to be unworthy of confidence.

451. To these counsels of kindness qualified by prudence, which are such as ordinary experience will suggest to most, there has to be added one other, which does not lie quite so much upon the surface. While desire for a friend's or relative's welfare may in some cases prompt the yielding of a large loan, a wise forethought for his welfare will often join other motives in refusing such aid.

For the beneficiary himself often needs saving from the disasters which his too sanguine nature threatens to bring on him. A large proportion of those who want loans may rightly be refused in their own interests. Anxiety to borrow so often goes along with incapacity to acquire, that we may almost say that money should be lent only to those who have proved their ability to make money. Hence, in many cases, the withholding of a desired accommodation is the warding off unhappiness from one who asks it.

I say this partly on the strength of a remark made in my hearing by a highly conscientious man who had carried on a business–a manufacture, I think–with borrowed capital. He said that the anxiety nearly killed him. The thought of the extent to which the welfare of others was staked, and the strain to fulfil his obligations, made his life a misery. Clearly, therefore, a far-seeing beneficence will in many cases decline, for the sake of the borrower, to furnish money, where a shortsighted beneficence would assent.

CHAPTER 7.

Relief of the Poor

452. We enter now upon the subject with which the conception of beneficence is almost wholly identified in some minds, and chiefly identified in many minds. With the word beneficence (or rather with the word benevolence, which commonly usurps its place) there usually springs up the idea of openhanded generosity to those in want. The giving of money or money's worth is so much the easiest and the most familiar mode of showing kindness, that by the unthinking, and especially by recipients, kindness is conceived as little else.

This species of beneficence, which, as we have seen, is one out of many, is daily presented to us in three different shapes. We have the law-established relief for the poor by distribution of money compulsorily exacted; with which may fitly be joined the alms derived from endowments. We have relief of the poor carried on by spontaneously organized societies, to which funds are voluntarily contributed. And then, lastly, we have the help privately given–now to those who stand in some relation of dependence, now to those concerning whose claims partial knowledge has been obtained, and now haphazard to beggars. We will consider these three kinds in the order here presented.

453. After all that has been said in preceding parts of this work, it is needless to argue at length that relief of the poor from public funds raised by rates, is, if considered apart from certain antecedents to be presently named, inconsistent with that limitation of state functions which ethics insists upon. If, as repeatedly pointed out, the true function of the state is that of guarding the aggregate of citizens and the individual citizen against aggressions, external and internal, so that each may be able to carry on his life with no greater hindrance than that which proximity of other citizens involves–if the state's only other function is that of so controlling the uses made of the inhabited territory, as to prevent sacrifice of the interests of the joint owner, the community; then it follows that if it taxes one class for the benefit of another, it exceeds its functions, and, in a measure contravenes the first of them.

This conclusion, however, holds as I have said “if considered apart from certain antecedents to be presently named.” The antecedents referred to are those which become visible on going back to prefeudal and feudal times, when serfs, though bound to the soil, had certain established rights to some produce of the soil; and those further antecedents which, at a later period, after cessation of serfdom and accompanying divorce of the serf from the soil, eventually reinstituted his connection and his lien by a Poor Law. While, in a measure, again tying him to his locality, this, in a measure, again recognized his claim upon its produce.

So regarded, a Poor Law may be said to have an equitable basis, and the poor relief administered under it to be something more than a charitable dole. Entire usurpation of the land by the landlord, and entire expropriation of the laborer, were unjust; and the reestablishment of the old relation in a freer form, may be interpreted as a roundabout mode of admitting afresh a just claim. Not improbably the relative stability of English institutions during later times, has been indirectly due to absence of that disaffection which results where the classes having no property are wholly at the mercy of the classes who have property.

The beneficence which takes the form of relief administered by public agencies, is difficult to deal with not only because it is thus complicated by considerations of justice, but because it is further complicated by considerations of accompanying injustices. Though, in early days, the legally enforced aid to the poor was contributed almost wholly by those who, as landowners, were rightly called on to contribute it; yet, in later days, it has come to be in large measure contributed by others than landowners–others on whom there is no just claim. Hence nothing beyond empirical judgments concerning compulsory beneficence seem possible.

When, however, we remember that beneficence, properly so-called, loses its quality when it is made compulsory, and that both benefactor and beneficiary then cease to have those feelings which normally accompany it, we shall be inclined to think that could the just claims of each member of the community as a part owner of the land be otherwise recognized, and beneficence wholly dissociated from governmental force, it would be far better. Let us contemplate the evils of the present system.

454. While, as admitted above, the community as a whole is the ultimate owner of the territory inhabited, considered as unreclaimed (though not of that value which clearing and cultivation have given to it); and while each member of the community has a resulting lien upon it; yet no such “right to a maintenance out of the soil,” irrespective of energy expended, as is often alleged, can be sustained. The land produces only in return for labor; and one who does not give the labor has no claim on its produce; or, at any rate, has a claim only to a share of the small amount it would yield if wild, which, with the existing population, would constitute nothing like a maintenance.

It is argued that the poor work for society while young and hale, and should be supported by society when sick and old. Under a socialist regime, which artificially apportioned payments for services, this would be a valid position; but, as it is, society gives to the laborer when young and hale as much as competition proves his work to be worth: so discharging its debt. Further, there is the reply that if, during his period of activity he has been underpaid, the underpayment has been in large part due to the fact that he has been burdened by having to help indirectly, if not directly, to support the idle and incapable. Giving necessaries of life to those who do not labor, inevitably takes away necessaries of life from those who do labor. The well-to-do are not pinched by this abstraction from the total supply of commodities. Those who are pinched are those who have but small margins. If they had not been thus depleted, they would have been able to provide for a period of unproductive life.

Apologists contend that rapid multiplication is ever producing a surplus of people for whom there is no work, but who must be supported. The first reply is that in proportion as provision is made for such a surplus, the surplus will go on continually increasing. The second reply is that only if the work to be done by the community is a fixed quantity, can the argument be sustained; since, otherwise, there must always be some further work which the surplus may be profitably employed on, in return for their maintenance. To say that some ought to do extra work that others may remain idle is absurd.

Occasionally it is urged that since there must always be a certain proportion of necessitous people–the diseased, the incapable, the unfortunate, the old–it is best that these should be relieved from funds administered by men appointed for the purpose, who will look carefully in each case and adjust the aid to the needs. This implies a faith in officialism at large which experience, repeated generation after generation, fails to dissipate. The assumption is that the agents employed, who in most cases aim to get their salaries with the least trouble, will be the best critics of the character, conduct, and wants of the recipients; and that guardians will administer public funds more wisely than private persons would administer their own funds. It ignores the enormous mass of evidence collected in Parliamentary Blue Books, as well as in special works on the subject, proving that under this system in past days corruptions and abuses of every kind were created and fostered, resulting in a universal demoralization.

Let us not forget that cruel injustice to individuals and mischief to the community, are caused by a heavy taxation of those who are but just able to maintain themselves and families, and are striving to do it. Numerous cases occur in which worthy and diligent men–sometimes thrown out of work by lack of demand and sometimes incapacitated for work by prolonged sickness–are compelled to pay rates; and even have their goods seized that money may be obtained for the maintenance of good-for-nothings. More than this; it not unfrequently happens that men who are employed in parishes at distances from their own, and could there maintain themselves but for the persecution of the poor-rate collector, have to abandon their places, return to their own parishes, get from it money to bring back their wives and children, and then apply for relief. So that there is a breaking up of healthy industrial relations to maintain a system which substitutes doles for wages.

Nor must we omit the fact that public administration of relief is doubly extravagant. It is extravagant in the sense that the distribution inevitably becomes lax, and, in the absence of personal interests, aid is given where aid is not required: often most lavishly to the least deserving. And it is extravagant in the sense that a large part of the total fund raised goes to maintain the machinery–goes in salaries of rate collectors, relieving officers, masters of workhouses and their subordinates, parish surgeons, &c.: a part amounting in extreme cases in Ireland to more than two-thirds, and in some cases in England at the present time to more than one-third– proportions which, if not paralleled generally, go along with high average proportions.

When we remember that law-enforced charity is, as already shown, inconsistent with justice, we are taught that in this as in all other cases, what is not just is in the long run not beneficent.1

455. Less objectionable than administration of poor relief by a law-established and coercive organization, is its administration by privately established and voluntary organizations–benevolent societies, mendicity societies, &c. “Less objectionable” I say but still, objectionable: in some ways even more objectionable. For though the vitiating influences of coercion are now avoided the vitiating influences of proxy distribution remain. If we have not a machinery so rigid as that set up by the Poor Law, yet we have a machinery. The beneficiary is not brought in direct relation with the benefactor, but in relation with an agent appointed by a number of benefactors. The transaction, instead of being one which advantageously cultivates the moral nature on both sides, excludes culture of the moral nature as much as is practicable, and introduces a number of bad motives. Note the ill-workings of the system.

As with the Poor Law (especially the old Poor Law), those who were distressed but thrifty and well conducted got no help, while help came to the improvident and ill conducted; so with philanthropic societies in general. The worthy suffer rather than ask assistance; while the worthless press for assistance and get it. The Mansion House Fund of 188586, for instance, was proved to have gone largely for the support of “idlers, spendthrifts, and drunkards.” “They did not see why they should not have some of the money going as well as their neighbors.” In some cases applicants “demanded their share.” Where, as in another case, employment was offered, less than one-fifth proved to be good for anything; showing that the unemployed, so generally pitied as ill used by society, are unemployed because they either cannot or will not work; and showing, by implication, that charitable agencies enable them to evade the harsh but salutary discipline of nature.

The encouragement of hypocrisy, which goes along with this neglect of the good poor who do not complain and attention to the bad poor who do, becomes conspicuous when religious professions are found instrumental to obtainment of alms. Clergy and pious women, easily deluded by sanctimonious talk, favor those who are most skilled in utterance of spiritual experiences, and in benedictions after receiving gifts. Hence a penalty on sincerity and a premium on lying; with resulting demoralization.

This evil is intensified by sectarian competition. There are competing missions which collect and distribute money to push their respective creeds, and bribe by farthing breakfasts and penny dinners. Nearly half the revenue of one mission is distributed in credit tickets, and “if the recipient wishes to cash his ticket, he cannot do so until after the evening service”: this vicious system being carried even to the extent that the visitors try “to force its tickets on the most respectable and independent people”–pauperizing them to make hypocritical converts of them. Said one woman, poor but clean and tidy who saw how the emissaries of the church favored the good-for-nothings: “I didn't want any of the good lady's tickets. . . but it's very ‘urtful to the feelings to see that careless drinking people living like ‘ogs gets all, and them as struggles and strives may go without.” And not only does there result a discouragement of virtue and an encouragement of vice, but there results a subsidizing of superstitions. Unless all the conflicting beliefs thus aided are right, which is impossible, there must be a propagation of untruth as well as a rewarding of insincerity.

Another evil is that easygoing people are exploité by cunning fellows who want to make places for themselves and get salaries. A crying need is found; prospectuses are widely distributed; canvassers press those on whom they call; and all because A, B, C &c., who have failed in their careers, have discovered that they can get money by playing the parts of manager, secretary, and collector. Then, if the institution vehemently urged is established, it is worked in their interest. But it is not always established. As there are bubble mercantile companies, so there are bubble philanthropic societies–societies kept up for a time merely for the purpose of getting subscriptions. Nay, on good authority I learn that there are gangs of men who make it their business to float bogus charities solely to serve their private ends.

Not even now have we reached the end of the evils. There is the insincerity of those who furnish the funds distributed: flunkeyism and the desire to display being often larger motives than beneficent feeling. These swindling promoters when writing to wealthy men for contributions, take care to request the honor of their names as vice presidents. Even where the institutions are genuine, the giving of handsome subscriptions or donations, is largely prompted by the wish to figure before the world as generous, and as filling posts of distinction and authority. A still meaner motive cooperates. One of the nouveaux riches, or even one whose business is tolerably prosperous, takes an active part in getting up, or in carrying on, one of these societies supposed to be originated purely by benevolence, because he likes the prospect of sitting on a committee presided over by a peer, and perhaps side by side with the son of one. He and his wife and his daughters enjoy the thought of seeing his name annually thus associated in the list of officers; and they contemplate this result more than the benefits to be given.

There are kindred vitiations of other organizations having beneficent aims–orphanages, provisions for unfortunate and aged tradesmen, &c. Here again, the least necessitous, who have many friends, are usually those to benefit, and the most necessitous, who have no friends, are neglected. Then there is the costliness and corruption of the selecting process–expensive and laborious canvassing, exchange of votes, philanthropic logrolling. Evidently the outlay for working the system, in money and effort, is such as would be equivalent to a maintenance for many more beneficianes, were it not thus wasted in machinery.

Nor is it otherwise with institutions thought by most people to be indisputably beneficial–hospitals and dispensaries. The first significant fact is that thirty percent of the people of London are frequenters of them; and the largeness of this proportion makes it clear that most of them, not to be ranked as indigent, are able to pay their doctors. Gratis medical relief tends to pauperize in more definite ways. The outpatients begin by getting physic and presently get food; and the system “leads them afterwards openly to solicit pecuniary aid.” This vitiating effect is proved by the fact that during the forty years from 1830 to 1869, the increase in the number of hospital patients has been five times greater than the increase of population; and as there has not been more disease, the implication is obvious. Moreover the promise of advice for nothing, attracts the mean-spirited to the extent that “the poor are now being gradually ousted out of the consulting room by well-to-do persons.” People of several hundreds a year, even up to a thousand, apply as outpatients, going in disguise: twenty percent of the outpatients in one large hospital having “given false addresses” for the purpose of concealing their identity. Swarming as patients thus do, it results that each gets but little attention: a minute being the average for each, sometimes diminished to forty-five seconds. Thus those for whom the gratis advice is intended get but little. Often “the assistance given is merely nominal”; and “is both a deception on the public and a fraud upon the poor.” These gratuitous medical benefits, such as they are, “are conferred chiefly by the members of the unpaid professional staffs” of these charities. Some of them prescribe at the rate of 318 patients in three hours and twenty minutes–a process sufficiently exhausting for men already hard worked in their private practice, and sufficiently disheartening to men with little private practice, who thus give without payment aid which otherwise they would get payment for, very much needed by them. So that the £600,000 a year of the metropolitan hospitals, which, if the annual value of the lands and buildings occupied were added would reach very nearly a million, has largely the effect of demoralizing the patients, taking medical care from those it was intended for and giving it to those for whom it was not, and obliging many impecunious doctors and surgeons to work hard for nothing.2

These various experiences, then, furnished by societies and institutions supported by voluntary gifts and subscriptions, unite to show that whatever benefits flow from them are accompanied by grave evils–evils sometimes greater than the benefits. They force on us the truth that, be it compulsory or noncoinpulsory, social machinery wastes power, and works other effects than those intended. In proportion as beneficence operates indirectly instead of directly, it fails in its end.

456. Alike in the foregoing sections and in the foregoing parts of this work, there has been implied the conclusion that the beneficence which takes the form of giving material aid to those in distress, has the best effects when individually exercised. If, like mercy it “blesses him that gives and him that takes,” it can do this in full measure only when the benefactor and beneficiary stand in direct relation. It is true, however, that individual beneficence often falls far short of the requirements, often runs into excesses, and is often wrongly directed. Let us look at its imperfections and corruptions.

The most familiar of these is the careless squandering of pence to beggars, and the consequent fostering of idleness and vice. Sometimes because their sympathies are so quick that they cannot tolerate the sight of real or apparent misery; sometimes because they quiet their consciences and think they compound for misdeeds by occasional largesse; sometimes because they are moved by that other-worldliness which hopes to obtain large gifts hereafter by small gifts here; sometimes because, though conscious of mischief likely to be done, they have not the patience needed to make inquiries, and are tempted to end the matter with a sixpence or something less; men help the bad to become worse. Doubtless the evil is great, and weighs much against the individual exercise of beneficence–practically if not theoretically.

The same causes initiate and maintain the begging-letter impostures. Occasional exposures of these in daily papers might serve as warnings; but always there is a new crop of credulous people who believe what they are told by cunning dissemblers, and yield rather than take the trouble of verification: thinking, many of them, that they are virtuous in thus doing the thing which seems kind, instead of being, as they are, vicious in taking no care to prevent evil. That the doings of such keep alive numbers of scamps and swindlers, every one knows; and doubtless a considerable setoff to the advantages of individual beneficence hence arises.

Then, again, there meets us the objection that if there is no compulsory raising of funds to relieve distress, and everything is left to the promptings of sympathy, people who have little or no sympathy, forming a large part of the community, will contribute nothing; and will leave undue burdens to be borne by the more sympathetic. Either the requirements will be inadequately met or the kindhearted will have to make excessive sacrifices. Much force though there is in this objection, it is not so forcible as at first appears. In this case, as in many cases, wrong inferences are drawn respecting the effects of a new cause, because it is supposed that while one thing is changed all other things remain the same. It is forgotten that in the absence of a coercive law there often exists a coercive public opinion. There is no legal penalty on a lie, if not uttered after taking an oath; and yet the social disgrace which follows a convicted liar has a strong effect in maintaining a general truthfulness. There is no prescribed punishment for breaking social observances; and yet these are by many conformed to more carefully than are moral precepts or legal enactments. Most people dread far more the social frown which follows the doing of something conventionally wrong, than they do the qualms of conscience which follow the doing of something intrinsically wrong.3 Hence it may reasonably be concluded that if private voluntary relief of the poor replaced public compulsory relief, the diffused sentiment which enforces the one would go a long way toward maintaining the other. The general feeling would become such that few, even of the unsympathetic, would dare to face the scorn which would result did they shirk all share of the common responsibility; and while there would probably be thus insured something like contributions from the indifferent or the callous, there would, in some of them, be initiated, by the formal practice of beneficence, a feeling which in course of time would render the beneficence genuine and pleasurable.

A further difficulty presents itself. “I am too much occupied,” says the man of business when exhorted to exercise private beneficence. “I have a family to bring up; and my whole time is absorbed in discharging my responsibilities, parental and other. It is impossible for me, therefore, to make such inquiries as are needful to avoid giving misdirected assistance. I must make my contribution and leave others to distribute.” That there is force in the reply cannot be denied. But when we call to mind the common remark that if you want anything done you must apply to the busy man rather than to the man of leisure, we may reasonably question whether the busy man may not occasionally find time enough to investigate cases of distress which are forced on his attention. Sometimes there may even result, from a due amount of altruistic action, a mental gain conducive to efficiency in the conduct of affairs.

At any rate it must be admitted that individual ministration to the poor is the normal form of ministration; and that, made more thoughtful and careful, as it would be if the entire responsibility of caring for the poor devolved upon it, it would go a long way towards meeting the needs: especially as the needs would be greatly diminished when there had been excluded the artificially generated poverty with which we are surrounded.

457. But now, from this general advocacy of individual giving versus giving by public and quasi-public agencies, I pass to the special advocacy of the natural form of individual giving–a form which exists and which simply needs development.

Within the intricate plexus of social relations surrounding each citizen, there is a special plexus more familiar to him than any other, and which has established greater claims on him than any other. Everyone who can afford to give assistance, is brought by his daily activities into immediate contact with a cluster of those who by illness, by loss of work, by a death, or by other calamity, are severally liable to fall into a state calling for aid; and there should be recognized a claim possessed by each member of this particular cluster.

In early societies, organized on the system of status, there went, along with the dependence of inferiors, a certain kind of responsibility for their welfare. The simple or compound family group, formed of relatives standing in degrees of subordination, and usually possessing slaves, was a group so regulated that while the inferiors were obliged to do what they were told, and receive what was given to them, they usually had a sufficiency given to them. They were much in the position of domestic animals in resp