neighborhood on
charity would cover the field of active beneficence with an efficiency
attainable in no other way, and at a greatly diminished cost of time and
substance. There is yet another type of neighborhood, consecrated to our
reverent observance by the parable of the Good Samaritan. There are from
time to time cases of want and suffering brought, without our seeking,
under our immediate regard,--cast, as it were, directly upon our kind
offices. The person thus commended to us is, for the time, our nearest
neighbor, nay, our nearest kinsman, and the very circumstances which have
placed him in this relation to us, make him fittingly the foremost object
of our charity.

The question sometimes presents itself *whether ** we shall bestow an
immediate, yet transient benefit, or a more remote, but permanent good*.
If the two are incompatible, and the former is not a matter of absolute
necessity, the latter is to be preferred. Thus remunerative employment is
much more beneficial than alms to an able-bodied man, and it is better
that he suffer some degree of straitness till he can earn a more
comfortable condition, than that he be first made to feel the dependence
of pauperism. Yet if his want be entire and urgent, the delay of immediate
relief is the part of cruelty. On similar grounds, beneficence which
embraces a class of cases or persons is to be preferred to particular acts
of kindness to individuals. Thus it seems harsh to refuse alms to an
unknown street beggar; but as such relief gives shelter to a vast amount
of fraud, idleness, and vice, it is much better that we should sustain, by
contributions proportioned to our ability, some system by which cases of
actual need, and such only, can be promptly and adequately cared for, and
that we then--however reluctantly--refuse our alms to applicants of doubtful
merit.

Chapter XIV.

ANCIENT HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

The numerous *ethical systems* that have had currency in earlier or later
times, may be divided into two classes,--the one embracing those which make
virtue a means; the other, those which make it an end. According to the
former, virtue is to be practised for the good that will come of it;
according to the latter, for its own sake, for its intrinsic excellence.
These classes have obvious subdivisions. The former includes both the
selfish and the utilitarian theory; while the latter embraces a wide
diversity o