There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.It is human,it is divine,carrion.If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good,I should run for my life,as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoon,which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated,for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,-some of its virus mingled with my blood.No,-in this case I would rather 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 warm 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 dog that will do as much.Philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense.Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way,and has his reward;but,comparatively speaking,what are a hundred Howards to 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 philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me,or the like of me.
The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who,being burned at the stake,suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors.Being superior to physical suffering,it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer;and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who,for their part,did not care how they were done by,who loved their enemies after a new fashion,and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need,though it be your example which leaves them far behind.If you give money,spend yourself with it,and do not merely abandon it to them.We make spurious mistakes sometimes.Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross.It is partly his taste,and not merely his misfortune.If you give him money,he will perhaps buy more rags with it.I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond,in such mean and ragged clothes,while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments,till,one bitter cold day,one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him,and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin,though they were dirty and ragged enough,it is true,and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him,he had so many intra ones.This ducking was the very thing he needed.Then I began to pity myself,and I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him.There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root,and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of 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 relieve.It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest.Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens.Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity;maybe you should spend the nine tenths so,and done with it.Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then.Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found,or to the remissness of the officers of justice?
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.Nay,it is greatly overrated;and it is our selfishness which overrates it.A robust poor man,one sunny day here in Concord,praised a fellow-townsman to me,because,as he said,he was kind to the poor;meaning himself.The kind uncles and aunts of the races are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.I once heard a reverend lecturer on England,a man of learning and intelligence,after enumerating her scientific,literary,and political worthies,Shakespeare,Bacon,Cromwell,Milton,Newton,and others,speak next of her Christian heroes,whom,as if his profession required it of him,he elevated to a place far above all the rest,as the greatest of the great.They were Penn,Howard,and Mrs.Fry.Everyone must feel the falsehood and cant of this.The last were not England's best men and women;only,perhaps,her best philanthropists.