DEFECTS OF GIVING
A colleague of mine, an excellent classical scholar, received by
bequest an admirable collection of Latin authors. In the writers
themselves, in the choice editions, and the appropriate bindings he
took extreme pleasure. When talking with him about them one day I asked
what he intended to do with the books at his death. Would he have them
given to another Latinist as fine as himself? Or would he have them
go to some college library where any one might use them? He said the
question had often puzzled him, but he had finally decided to send
them to the auction-room. They were books he had so much loved that
he could not bear to have them fall into unappreciative hands. If he
gave them away, what warrant had he that they would be prized? If they
were sold, nobody would obtain one unless he were willing to get it by
some sacrifice. This was not a case where generosity could be trusted.
Probably the matter could be more wisely settled by self-interest.
This instance makes evident the uncertain character of giving. However
superior in altruistic fulness gifts are to manners, they are unfit,
unless supplemented by some other principle, to form a practical rule
of life. Let us examine them in detail and see wherein they fail to
embody complete altruism. In their very nature I find them to be
exceptional, irrational, and condescending; and I will briefly explain
each of these points.
Giving is occasional and fragmentary. It cannot occupy a life. The
great body of our time and attention must be directed upon individual
interests. I rise in the morning after eight hours of sleep, go
downstairs to breakfast, take my walk for the needed morning exercise,
on returning look over my mail and the morning paper, turn to my
studies, to my meals, to calling on a friend. It is all egoistic.
No doubt during the day I am repeatedly summoned to attend to other
people’s affairs. Begging letters, interruptions, engagements of a
public and business nature are not absent. They intervene and stand out
isolated in my egoistic day. No doubt, too, most of my occupation with
myself--in sleep, food, exercise, study--is a necessary preparation for
social service. All I am urging is that social service cannot stand
alone. It requires a large individualistic background. The care one
gives to others is occasional, one might even say exceptional. In order
to be able to meet it, our primary and preponderant care must be given
to ourselves. Such a thing as interest in altruistic giving, separate
from personal gain and established as an independent guiding principle,
is altogether impossible. Only at intervals comes the generous act; in
general, we are busied with our own affairs.
On this inseparability of egoism and altruism I received excellent
instruction many years ago out of the mouth of babes and sucklings. A
couple of little children, a girl of four and a boy of five years old,
had just been tucked into their beds. Their mother in the next room
heard them talking. Listening to learn if they needed anything, she
found them discussing one of the vast problems for which the infant
mind seems to have a natural affinity. They were inquiring why we were
ever put into the world. The little girl suggested we might have
been sent here to help others. “Why no, indeed, Mabel,” was her big
brother’s reply. “Of course not; for then what would others be here
for?” Pertinent reflection, putting the answer to one-sided altruism
into a nutshell! If our own affairs are worthless, why suppose they
can be of worth to others? It is no kindness to bestow on another what
has never been found good for ourselves. A gift should cost something.
Something properly valued by us we part with for another’s sake. A
strong egoistic sense, then, is a condition of altruistic action. The
latter cannot cover the whole of a life. No man is benevolent all the
time, but exceptionally, at intervals, when regard for himself may
safely be withdrawn.
A graver defect of giving is its arbitrary character. Our reformers
have been attempting to rationalize charity and certainly have devised
methods by which some of its worst evils may be lessened. But until
they stop it altogether they will not rid it of irrational wilfulness.
One would say that in kind and degree my gift should answer another’s
reasonable claim. But it never does. A just claim renders a gift
impossible. Gifts come from a region outside claims, outside rational
justification. They are the expression of arbitrary will. I give
because I want to, and the other knows he has no right beyond my
inclination to what he is receiving. Were there legitimate grounds for
my pretended gift it would be merely the payment of a debt and would
afford no such pleasure as does the over-and-above of a gift. A clerk
may have satisfaction in his salary, but his feeling on receiving his
employer’s gift is something altogether different. The gift dropped
from the sky. He had no idea it was coming. He really had done nothing
to deserve it. Others might have had it equally well, but by some fancy
he had been picked out for enrichment. It is this unexpectedness, this
incalculability, which makes a gift so good. Gifts at Christmas, which
have been systematized, are of a paler order. Even in these there is
usually uncertainty enough left to keep them agreeable. Our regular
giver may decide to give elsewhere this year, he may forget; what he
will select we cannot guess. The important part of the gift is not
its intrinsic worth but its expression of the giver’s will. Gladness
over the former springs from greed, over the latter from gratitude.
This arbitrary will on the giver’s part and the absence of claim in the
receiver make a reasonable gift hard to conceive. To be a gift at all
it must be capricious, undeserved, and only occasional.
But there is a feature of giving more obnoxious than either of
these two, yet no less deeply rooted in giving than exceptionality
and caprice. A gift has always something disparaging about it. It
professes to honor, but deep in the heart of it there is disparagement,
condescension at least. I declare another to be better than myself,
preferring that he shall be the owner of something prized by me. Yet
in reality I retain the superior position myself and make the one whom
I honor my dependent. Rightly did Jesus say: “It is more blessed to
give than to receive.” How could it be otherwise? The giver is the
wealthy man, the man of power and preference; the receiver confessedly
the man of need, passive to another’s will. The very attempt, then,
that I make to raise him up and provide him with something acceptable
from my store sets him beneath me. He lacks, I abound. At the very
moment when turning to him I say: “I prefer you to myself and desire
that you rather than I should possess this,” I am really also saying:
“But by all right it belongs to me and I part with it as its and
your superior.” However glad, therefore, we may be to get our wants
supplied, a disagreeable taste is apt to lurk about the acceptance of
a gift. A good share of humility is required of one who will be an
altogether happy receiver, a contented inferior. Our age has discovered
this and has grown restive over charity. It would seem that in past
ages those who lacked the things that make life worth living stood with
outstretched hands to receive them from their rightful owners, and
that those who owned counted it a prerogative of their station thus
to assist their inferiors. But this humble attitude of the needy is
disappearing, together with many other traditions of aristocratic days.
Our poorer classes now have too much self-respect to be at ease in such
relations. Certainly the poor to-day are vastly better off than at
any other period of the world’s history, yet never more discontented.
The new self-respect which has come with easier conditions makes them
resent charity and dependence. “Give us what belongs to us,” they seem
to say. “We want no benevolence. If a better living should be ours,
we will take it as of right but not by favor. We stand on our own
feet, acknowledging inferiority to no man.” This rejection of charity
on grounds of self-respect is not uncommon to-day. I have met it in
administering the little trust for the benefit of students of which I
spoke. And though I do not altogether sympathize with it, I see in it
much to honor.
Such are the possible humiliations of the receiver. But the giver
is exposed to dangers hardly less. His gifts may be selfish rather
than generous. Few pleasures are greater than giving. In it we feel
our power and catch a sense of the creative efficiency of our will.
One often gives for the sake of indulging this self-assertion, with
small regard for the receiver. Then too, while a true gift costs the
giver something, he who gives out of his abundance may hardly feel the
loss, though feeling full well the glow of raising the helpless to
prosperity. That glow is by no means reprehensible. It is one of our
purest pleasures.
“All earthly joys go less
To the one joy of doing kindnesses.”
But it should not be reckoned as generosity. Should we not, too, in
estimating the altruistic worth of gifts deduct the many seeming gifts
which are prompted by shame? When asked for a subscription, I cannot
well refuse and continue to hold my place in public esteem. _Noblesse
oblige._ One must pay for dignity. It will not do, then, to assume that
giving is always an altruistic act. It may be. Yet even where it is
genuinely addressed to improving the condition of some needy person,
the danger is not absent of lowering the independence of that other,
of making him through our will our conscious inferior, and accordingly
implying disparagement in our very bounty. If in giving we always keep
the better end of the transaction for ourselves and hand the poorer to
another, few adjustments of social life will call for more tact.
Yet we are all of us receivers and generally manage to be such without
loss of dignity. Under what circumstances may we and may we not
preserve our self-respect and still take money? If a stranger passing
me on the street hands me a five-dollar bill, I should feel myself
disgraced if it went into my pocket. If one I did not know wrote from
a distant State his enjoyment of a book of mine, enclosing a check, I
should return the check. If finding a person in distress and helping
him he offered me money, I should refuse it. Independence is dear to
most of us and we do not care to part with it on grounds so casual.
This is the condemnation of “tipping,” that abominable practice
introduced from countries more servile than ours. It cheapens him who
gives and him who takes. I see only four occasions where the acceptance
of money is compatible with manhood.
Where misery is so abject that self-help is impossible it is no
disgrace to confess inferiority and lean on a supporting arm. Only we
must insist that as strength returns the arm be withdrawn. Permanent
invalidism is an insidious danger. The second and best accredited
ground for taking money honorably is that of money earned. Here I give
as much as I receive. Each of the two parties at some cost gets what
he desires and each gives with reference to another’s need. No doubt
there are degrees of dignity in the work done. If as a physician I
sell intellectual power and special knowledge, I am naturally honored
more than if as a day laborer I sell only physical exertion. But work
and wages are in themselves honorable, so that if ten cents is of more
consequence to me than getting my hands dirty, I am not disgraced by
blacking another man’s shoes.
A third case is of almost equal importance, though more complicated
and more liable to error. We may accept money in trust, receiving it
from an individual and returning its results to the public. I have
already spoken of this in connection with scholarship aids. Aids for
advanced research, whether from the government or private foundations,
are of the same nature. To be selected for such aid is a high honor,
justified, however, only by the receiver’s proving himself a good
transmitter. He should regard the money as given not to him but
through him and be sure that ultimately it reaches some mark other than
himself. This may be accomplished by returning an equal sum to the
source from which the aid came, by helping some other person equally
needy, or by dedicating to public service powers raised by such aid
from ordinary to superior rank. Equivalence should be brought about. In
some way the one benefited should put back what he has received. If he
allows it to stick in himself, untransmitted, he is disgraced.
I reserve to the last the completest ground of acceptance, love. Where
love is, there is no superior or inferior, no giver or receiver. The
two make up a conjunct self with mutual gain. Or shall we say that he
who loves delights to think of himself as inferior, prides himself
on it, and would be ashamed not to look up in glowing dependence? To
him, therefore, gifts bring no disparagement, but happy gratitude. In
such unabashed dependence most of us spent our early years. And if as
we grew strong fewer gifts of money came to us, their place was taken
by loving tokens more subtle, more pervasive, and coming from more
sources. Possibly we may say that only love and exchange make the
taking of money permissible, and that my first and third grounds are
only special cases of these two. It has been well said that there can
be true giving only where the two parties ideally change places: the
giver so putting himself in the receiver’s place that he feels the
afforded relief a personal gain; and the receiver sharing the pleasure
which under the circumstances the giver must feel. There is always,
however, a difference in the way we accept what comes by exchange and
what comes by love. In the former our thought is fixed on what is
received, in the latter on him who gave.
Such are the characteristics of the second stage of altruism. I
proposed to study that great principle from three points of view
which would show the successive steps by which, without injury to
the individual, it goes on to completeness. At the very beginning of
life, and ever after, we are called on to pay attention to others
and to subject ourselves to restrictions for their sake. We find
ourselves related or conjunct beings, and on our frank acceptance of
these relations our power and peace depend. Without the restraints of
manners life would be, as Hobbes said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short.” But the ever-present altruism here is imperfect because
primarily dictated by the desire to protect ourselves. The separate
self and the conjunct self are not necessarily united in manners. The
form of altruism may be kept for protective purposes when there is
nothing of it within.
The next higher stage, however, starts from within, the giver seeking
to promote another’s welfare at the cost of his own. But there is
always uncertainty in accomplishing this; it extends at best only to
brief portions of life, is impossible wherever rational claim enters,
and never escapes a suggestion of haughty disparagement. The trouble
in both of these stages is, after all, the same. _Alter_ and _ego_
have been conceived as distinct, and getting has been separated from
giving. But surely this is unnecessary. There are mutual situations
in life where each of two parties is at once giver and receiver. The
single self may be entirely at one with the conjunct, the conjunct
with the single. Only so in mutuality can altruism become complete.
To explaining this curious situation I shall devote my remaining
chapters. But before doing so I wish to turn back and make atonement
for a certain erroneous light in which I have placed these earlier
stages.
When I was analyzing manners my readers must have felt that those are
not the manners with which they are familiar. They have never felt the
need of barriers between friends or thought of manners as a protective
agency. Nor in gifts have they come upon my perplexities. Giving and
receiving have seemed to them matters usual and pleasant, and no notion
of superiority or inferiority has entered their heads.
No doubt this is a more frequent experience than that just described.
Yet my account is correct and important. It states the minimum of
altruism which necessarily enters into manners, what they are when
taken by themselves and unaffected by any higher range of our being.
As soon as we become acquainted with giving, it reacts on this earlier
stage and fills it with new meaning. Egoistic elements are softened.
Manners are used as an opportunity for tactful giving. An atmosphere
of kindness takes the place of restraint, the formal manners I have
described being reserved for formal occasions. Fortunately this higher
civilization is now wide-spread. Yet we can still detect what I would
call the guarded manners of some persons and set them in contrast to
the generous manners of others. People of guarded manners are ever
mindful of their own dignity, hold themselves somewhat aloof, and
make much of punctilio. Those of generous manners are ready to spend
themselves freely for the pleasure of those about them and seem able
to save any occasion from dulness with their stores of information,
wit, song, and lively anecdote. These persons look after those less
accustomed to society and unobtrusively help them on. But even their
admirable work is exceeded by those accustomed to mutuality. These
give us no impression of wealthy persons imparting to us their stores.
Their work is quieter. Their manners might be called friendly. They set
every one at ease and do not so much give as share, appearing as much
interested in our affairs as we could be in theirs. In their presence
we are simpler, cleverer, and less provincial than we had believed
ourselves to be.
In a similar way, under the influence of mutuality gifts become
transformed. Condescension disappears. The favor is on both sides. A
giver has enjoyed something so much that he wants his pleasure shared.
Will we take part with him? There is no stooping, no handing down to
one below. The two parties are on a level, joined in a mutual act.
“Will you do me the favor to accept this?” is both the language and the
feeling of the giver.
Matters of every-day life, so familiar that we seldom reflect on them,
I have attempted in the preceding chapters to analyze with something
like scientific precision. By so doing I have turned them into almost
unrecognizable abstractions. In closing, I should like to restore them
to their rightful color, and I have searched for a passage which might
present the approach of man to man just as we daily see it, with an
intimate blending of all three varieties of altruism--pure manners,
giving, and mutuality. In a passage from the Eighth Discourse of
Cardinal Newman’s _Idea of a University_ I find what I want, expressed
in language of extraordinary refinement and accuracy. It will be
noticed what prominence he gives to the negative function of manners,
how in depicting generosity he sees the danger of condescension, and
how he finds the crowning excellence of manners in that self-forgetting
mutuality which sets all at their ease.
“The true gentleman carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a
jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast: all clashing of
opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom
or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease
and at home. He has his eyes on all his company: he is tender toward
the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absurd.
He can recollect to whom he is speaking. He guards against unseasonable
allusions or topics which may irritate. He is seldom prominent in
conversation and never wearisome. He makes fight of favors while he
does them and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never
speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a
mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous
in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets
everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes,
never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp
sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.
From a long-sighted prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient
sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves toward our enemy as if he
were one day to be our friend. He has too much sense to be affronted
at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too
indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned on
philosophical principles: he submits to pain because it is inevitable,
to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is
destiny. If he engage in controversy of any kind, his disciplined
intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better
perhaps, but less educated, minds who, like blunt weapons, tear and
hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste
their strength on trifles, misconceive the adversary, and leave the
question more involved than they found it.”