834 THE DEPENDENT GROUP 



his fellow men to help. From the standpoint of the police, however, 

 the impulse evoked is almost the direct opposite that of self- 

 protection. 



When an indigent, through need of the necessary means of sub- 

 sistence, resorts to fraud or force, he can do this only through a 

 breach of the law. Society, which imposes a penalty on such a 

 breach of its laws, must guard against allowing such law-breaking, 

 committed through the force of a natural instinct, to have the 

 appearance of being justifiable. Means must be taken to anticipate 

 such an instinctive action by voluntarily supplying the poor man 

 with the means of satisfying his natural wants. The history of pov- 

 erty furnishes numerous proofs of the fact that the instinct of 

 self-preservation is under all circumstances stronger than the fear of 

 penalty. The whole of the measures by means of which it is sought 

 to alleviate the many and varied conditions of poverty, we designate 

 " poor-relief." No civilized state is without such measures, although 

 in various countries they have undergone a very different develop- 

 ment. Their foundation is laid by a feeling of fellowship, which at 

 first centres in the church parish and is directly shown by the mem- 

 bers of the parish toward one another. Hence the custom passes 

 over, as a religious exercise, to the church itself, which comes to 

 recognize a definite religious duty toward the poor. It also grows 

 up out of that feeling of fellowship which neighbors have, manifests 

 itself in the mutual help of those bound together by a common occu- 

 pation or calling into orders of knighthood, religious orders, merchant 

 and trade guilds, unions, brotherhoods, and associations, and finds 

 its final comprehensive expression in the recognition of the duty of 

 poor-relief through political organizations, church, province, state. 

 Yet its actual development assumes very different forms. In the 

 Latin countries the exercise of poor-relief and charity continues to 

 centre really in the church. In the Teutonic countries, on the 

 other hand, it develops from an ecclesiastical to an ecclesiastico- 

 civil, and then gradually to a completely civil, poor-relief. In 

 keeping with this development, the ecclesiastical poor-relief in the 

 Teutonic countries remains still in a mere modest, supplementary 

 position, closely confined within the limits of those bound together 

 by a common creed. The opposite is the case in the Latin coun- 

 tries. Here charity, which is administered through churches, 

 monasteries, religious orders, and charitable endowments, is sup- 

 plemented by state and parish measures. The traces of this his- 

 torical development are to be found in numerous halfway forms. 

 For example, even in the England of to-day the public poor-relief 

 is administered by unions which correspond to the several church 

 parishes. In the French bureaux de bienfaisance and in the Italian 

 congregazione di carita the interest of the community at large finds 



