Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/52

 instead of equalizing men's misfortunes once for all, so that no further rescue might be needed, actually prefer to patch up life's injustices from year to year, finding a moral satisfaction in being charitable, and craving, therefore, a supply of the unfortunate to exercise that virtue on.

These criticisms, it seems to me, have too much truth in them. They throw us back upon our conscience, and force us to examine the motives with which we call others to service or answer the call ourselves. Is service truly a rescue or a profession? Do we hope to cure our neighbor's misfortune or to live by it? Nothing could be more reasonable than that service should be judged by its value to the served, yet too often we practise this unselfishness as it were for our own good; we obey the call to service as an invitation to a salutary exercise of the