ponsibility
of deciding what to do rests on the man who has to act. The economist,
therefore, does not say to any one, You ought never to give money to
charity. He contradicts anybody who says, You ought to give money to
charity; and, in opposition to any such person, he says, Let me show
you what difference it makes to you, to others, to society, whether you
give money to charity or not, so that you can make a wise and
intelligent decision. Certainly there is no harder thing to do than to
employ capital charitably. It would be extreme folly to say that
nothing of that sort ought to be done, but I fully believe that today
the next pernicious thing to vice is charity in its broad and popular
sense.

In the preceding chapters I have discussed the public and social
relations of classes, and those social topics in which groups of
persons are considered as groups or classes, without regard to personal
merits or demerits. I have relegated all charitable work to the domain
of private relations, where personal acquaintance and personal
estimates may furnish the proper limitations and guarantees. A man who
had no sympathies and no sentiments would be a very poor creature; but
the public charities, more especially the legislative charities,
nourish no man's sympathies and sentiments. Furthermore, it ought to
be distinctly perceived that any charitable and benevolent effort which
any man desires to make voluntarily, to see if he can do any good, lies
entirely beyond the field of discussion. It would be as impertinent to
prevent his effort as it is to force co-operation in an effort on some
one who does not want to participate in it. What I choose to do by way
of exercising my own sympathies under my own reason and conscience is
one thing; what another man forces me to do of a sympathetic character,
because his reason and conscience approve of it, is quite another
thing.

What, now, is the reason why we should help each other? This carries us
back to the other illustration with which we started. We may
philosophize as coolly and correctly as we choose about our duties and
about the laws of right living; no one of us lives up to what he knows.
The man struck by the falling tree has, perhaps, been careless. We are
all careless. Environed as we are by risks and perils, which befall us
as misfortunes, no man of us is in a position to say, "I know all the
laws, and am sure to obey them all; therefore I shall never need aid
and sympat