Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/348

 33 6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of view on which the necessity of helping the poor is based. They may be briefly classified as "philanthropic" and "police." The spectacle of a human being suffering from want is so affecting that it calls out the feeling of sympathy which impels 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 subsistence, 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 antici- pate such an instinctive action by voluntarily supplying the poor man with the means of satisfying his natural wants. The history / of poverty 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 development. Their foundation is laid by a feeling of fellowship, which at first centers in the church parish and is directly shown by the members 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 fellow- ship which neighbors have, manifests itself in the mutual help of those bound together by a common occupation or calling into orders of knighthood, religious orders, merchant and trade guilds, unions, brotherhoods, and associations, and finds its final com- prehensive 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 center really in the church. In the Teutonic countries, on the other hand, it develops from an ecclesiastical to an ecclesiastico-