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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



demonstration of the superior usefulness 

 of the proposed end would justify the 

 transfer to it of capital already usefully 

 and worthily employed. 



Now, among the points to be con- 

 sidered in weighing such a question, this 

 certainly should not be overlooked, that 

 the altruistic act, while it may alleviate 

 a given case of misfortune, tends to pro- 

 duce another case to replace the one 

 relieved. Does any one ask how ? i>y 

 creating an expectation in the minds of 

 others that their troubles will be light- 

 ened or removed in a similar manner, 

 and so causing a certain relaxation of 

 the effort by which a condition of help- 

 lessness might be averted. The proba- 

 bility is that not one only but several 

 cases calling for charitable interference 

 might be the result of a single stroke of 

 charitable effort; just as a single prize 

 taken in a lottery upsets scores if not 

 hundreds or thousanrls of minds. We 

 need not, however, theorize on the sub- 

 ject — though the theory on this occasion 

 is nearly as demonstrable as a propo- 

 sition in Euclid — for experience has 

 proved over and over again that sys- 

 tematic " charity " makes beggars. The 

 man, therefore, whose money is usefully 

 employed, and who has nothing to re- 

 proach himself with on the score of per- 

 sonal waste, will have to be satisfied 

 that the cases of want or vice that he 

 cures — admitting that he cures them — 

 will not be made up, or more than made 

 up, by others resulting more or less di- 

 rectly from his benevolence. 



But in how many cases is real good 

 done to the so-called "beneficiaries" of 

 charity ? "We have ourselves heard the 

 most mournful confessions on this sub- 

 ject from persons who practiced altru- 

 ism, or Christian charity, as they would 

 perhai>s rather have called it, from mo- 

 tives of religious duty. According to 

 these statements, it is a comparatively 

 rare thing to be able to record any solid 

 advantage as resulting to the objects of 

 such charity. But, if so, must not harm 

 result? If we mistake not, the secre- 



taries and other agents of our Young 

 Men's Christian Associations could tell 

 of hordes of shiftless, characterless creat- 

 ures, interspersed now and then by some 

 unctuous adventurer, who haunt their 

 rooms in the expectation of relief, and 

 who frequently get relief, but of whom 

 no good is ever afterward heard. We do 

 not deny that money may be expended 

 in such a way as to do real good to those 

 who need help ; we only say that it is 

 difficult so to expend it, and very diffi- 

 cult to guard against doing harm to 

 others by weakening the motives for 

 resistance to the habits that make for 

 pauperism. Some large charity may 

 seem a beautiful and admirable thing 

 considered in itself; but we should not 

 stop with this inside view. We are bound 

 to ask what effect it is producing on 

 society at large ; and if a current is seen 

 ever setting toward it, and virtually 

 " nulla vestigia retrorsum " — no steps 

 turned away from it— we must moder- 

 ate our admiration of the function it is 

 performing in the community. 



It is common for sentimentalists to 

 speak of natural selection as the very 

 type of a " merciless law." But who 

 will dare to say with confidence that 

 natural selection is not more merciful, 

 on the whole, than man's vaguely al- 

 truistic interferences with the natural 

 course of things? Nature makes in- 

 competence and misery short-lived, and 

 reduces them in every way to a mini- 

 mum. Man steps in and accuses Nature 

 of cruelty ; he tries his own hand, and, 

 lo ! thousands and hundreds of thou- 

 sands are leading a languishing physical 

 and a depraved intellectual and moral 

 existence. The result is not one to be 

 proud of. Man should love his neigh- 

 bor. Truly ; but that does not mean 

 that he should undermine his neighbor's 

 independence, or that he should injure 

 half a dozen neighbors for the sake of 

 benefiting one. As we understand Mr. 

 Smiley, altruism is just as much in need 

 of being kept within the bounds of rea- 

 son as egoism. He would not discour- 



