Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/92

84 Continuing the inquiry, he asks: "Is there no good to be accomplished by giving in charity? Am I to be prohibited from aiding the needy and giving succor to the distressed? Am I to use no endeavor toward bettering the lot of the more lowly than I?" The reply in part has been amply suggested. The highest charity to those who are able and have opportunity to work, but decline to do so, is to endeavor to make them clearly understand that unless they contribute as they are able to the benefit of others, there is no reason that from the efforts of others benefit should accrue to them. The highest charity to those who are able and willing to work, but have not the opportunity to do so, is to use every endeavor to establish conditions that will permit them to contribute as best they can to the benefit of others, and to receive benefit in full proportion to the value of their efforts in return; and, likewise, the highest charity to those who are susceptible to that training which would develop the capacity and willingness for contribution to the benefit of others, is to establish conditions whereunder they may receive that training. It should go without saying that those who are in affliction by reason of sickness, by the sudden death of those upon whom they have justly been dependent, or by reason of "plague, pestilence, or famine," should be given that succor which will restore or lead them to usefulness, and it should go without saying that, when it is just for one to give, it is just for the other to receive. And those who, from mental, moral, and physical defects, are actually incapable of maintaining themselves by their own exertions should be placed under conditions that will render them as little burdensome as possible to the community as a whole.

The foregoing are generalizations that bear upon the serious problems of the treatment of the criminal and shiftless, of labor, wages, and of education, and whose practical application under the existing status can not but often be most difficult. If, however, all who desire the betterment of their kind—all those who make and execute laws, who instruct their fellow-men in pulpit or press, who mold the minds of the young in school or home—would perceive as a principle that the greatest good to all comes from the contribution of each in kind and degree as may be possible to the totality of effort in return for benefit to the full value thereof, and would give that principle the fullest possible application in their own actions and in the endeavor to instill it in the minds of those under their guidance, or otherwise associated with them, all these problems, which are important factors in the great problem of civilization, will sooner or later, upon the basis of that principle, be solved.

It will be perceived that the full application of that principle will nullify many beliefs and traditions that, descending through