Chapter 30 Economics - 25

But all this is selfish, I heard some townspeople say.I admit that, until now, I have done very little philanthropy.I have a sense of duty which has cost me many pleasures, among which I have thrown away the joy of charity.Someone is trying to persuade me to help some poor people in the city: if I have nothing to do--and the devil is for the idle--maybe I'll try something like that , pastime.However, whenever I have tried this, to maintain some poor people in every respect as comfortable as mine, and to make it their duty to live in heaven, I have even offered my help, but these The poor are unanimously willing to remain poor without hesitation.Some men and women in our city are doing everything they can to benefit their fellow man, which I believe will at least deter people from engaging in other inhuman endeavors.But philanthropy, like any other enterprise, requires natural talent. "Doing good things" is a profession in which a person is superfluous.Besides, I tried it too.Oddly enough, it's not to my liking, so I'm content with myself.Perhaps I should not consciously and cautiously evade the special duty of "doing good" that society requires of me to save the universe from destruction, but I believe that there is indeed a kind of charity in some place. However, in comparison, I don't know how much stronger power is maintaining our current universe.But I will not prevent a man from developing his genius; I will not do this work myself, and the man who does it will do it with all his heart and life, I will say, even if the whole world says this. It is "doing evil things", it is likely to have this kind of view, you still have to stick to it.

I am not at all saying that I am an exception, and no doubt many of my readers will likewise argue.In doing something--I do not promise that the neighbors will say it is a good thing--I can say without hesitation, I am a very good hired hand; but what I am good at , it's up to my employer to find out.What I do well, any so-called good that belongs to common sense must not be on my main track, and most of them are things I have no intention of doing.People are practical, say, start where you stand, be what you are, don't aim primarily at being more worthwhile, but do good things with a good heart.If I were to speak in that tone, I'd simply say: Go ahead and be good.As if the sun, after shining its flames on the moon or a sixth-magnitude star, would stop and run around like a good Robin, peeking out every village window, driving men mad and turning flesh bad to make visible in dark places, instead of continually intensifying his soft heat and beneficence, till it became so radiant that few could gaze at it, while it went round the world, walking in Its own orbit, good deeds, or, as a true philosopher has discovered, the earth orbits it to its advantage.When Phaethon wanted to prove that he was born as a god, benevolent to the world, and drove the sun wheel, and went out of orbit in just one day, he burned down several rows of houses on the street below heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth , dried up all the spring every year, and created a Sahara desert. Finally, Jupiter struck him to the ground with a thunderbolt, and the sun did not shine for a year to mourn his death.

There is no worse smell than goodness gone.It is like the stench of the carrion of a man or the carrion of a god.If I do know that someone is coming to my house with the intention of doing me a favor, I'll run for my life, as if I'd run from a gale called a simon in the deserts of Africa, whose grains of sand fill your mouth, Ears, nose, and eyes, until you are suffocated, for I fear his good deeds may come to me,—his poison mixed with my blood.No,—if so, I'd rather suffer what was done to me, and that would be more natural.If I am hungry and he feeds me, if I am cold and he warms me, if I fall in a ditch and he picks me up, he is not a good man.I can show you a Newfoundland dog that can do it all.Charity is not a generalized love of fellow man.Howard is undoubtedly excellent and great from his own side, and has been rewarded; but, compared with him, if the charity of Howards is not as good as the best we already have What good are a hundred Howards to us, then, when we are most deserving of help?I have never heard of a charitable meeting ever sincerely proposing to do good to me, or to some like me.

The Jesuits, too, baffled the Indians, who, while chained and burned alive, came up with novel ways of abusing their torturers.They are beyond the pain of the body, and sometimes prove they are more than the consolation of the soul that the missionary can offer; the rule you should follow is to kill them with less chatter, less chatter in these people's ears, They don't care at all how they are killed, they love their enemies in a novel way, and have pardoned almost all crimes they have committed. You must give the poor the help they need most, though it is your fault that they lag behind you.If you give money to them, you should spend it yourself with them, not throw it at them.We sometimes make weird mistakes.Often it was the poor man, shabby and shabby and rough, but he had no fear of cold and starvation, he was not so unfortunate, and he often enjoyed it.If you gave him money, he might buy more rags.I used to pity the very poor Irish workman, digging ice on the lake, so shabby and mean, while I wore clean clothes which seemed to be more appropriate) and shivered with cold, until a bitter cold On a cold day, a man who fell into the ice came to my house to keep warm. I saw him take off three pairs of trousers and two pairs of socks before he could see the skin. Although the trousers and socks were torn, it was true, but He rejected the extra clothes that I was going to offer him because he had so many inner clothes.He deserved to be overboard.So I began to pity myself, and it would be more charitable to give me a flannel shirt than a second-hand clothes shop for him.A thousand men are cutting the branches of evil, but one man is cutting the root of evil, and it may be that the man who spends the most time and money on the poor is the one who, by his way of life, causes the most poverty and misery , and now he is trying in vain to save him.It is the sanctimonious slaveholder who gives a tenth of the interest on slave production to give Sunday freedom to the rest.Someone asked him to work in the kitchen as a gesture of gratitude to the poor.Wouldn't it be more compassionate for them not to work in the kitchen themselves?You brag that you give a tenth of your income to charity, maybe you should give nine tenths, and call it a day.At that time, only one tenth of the wealth was recovered by the society.Is this due to the generosity of the possessor, or the negligence of the just?