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1I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence. At
2doing something,--I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,--I do not hesitate to say that I should
3be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good I do, in the common sense of
4that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where
5you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about
6doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should
7stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a
8Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and making darkness
9visible, instead of steadily increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can
10look him in the face, and then, and in the mean while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or
11rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his
12heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove out of the beaten track, he burned
13several blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up every
14spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt,
15and the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year. There is no odor so bad as that which arises from
16goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with
17the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African
18deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear
19that I should get some of his good done to me,--some of its virus mingled with my blood. No,--in this case I would
20rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or
21warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland
22dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense. Howard was no doubt an
23exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred Howards
24to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a
25philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me. The Jesuits were quite
26balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being
27superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries
28could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their
29part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely
30forgiving them all they did. Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which
31leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious
32mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his
33taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity
34the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and
35somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to
36warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though
37they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered
38him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that
39it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thousand
40hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount
41of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to
42relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the
43rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they
44employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine
45tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of
46him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice? Philanthropy is almost the only
47virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which
48overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he
49was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual
50fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating
51her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next
52of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest,
53as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this.
54The last were not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.
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