第134章 INDIVIDUAL MOTIVES TO SOCIAL SERVICE(7)

relief it brings to the individual 'case' that is relieved, and by the softening influence it exercises on the hearts and heads of those who witness it.It substitutes the idea and the desire of individual reform for those of social reform, and so weakens the capacity for collective self-help in society.The most striking testimony to the justice of this analysis is furnished by the tendency of 'model millionaires' to direct all their charity to wholesale and what they deem social purposes, rather than to individual cases.In order to avoid the errors of indiscriminate charity, they fasten their munificence upon society in the shape of universities, hospitals, parks, libraries and other general benefits.Realising quite clearly, as they think, that the character of an individual is weakened and demoralised by a charitable donation which enables him to get what otherwise he could only have got by his personal exertion, they proceed to weaken and demoralise whole cities and entire nations, by doing for these social bodies what they are quite capable of doing for themselves by their own collective exertions.These public gifts of millionaires debauch the character of cities and states more effectively than the private gifts of unreflecting donors the character of individuals.For, whereas many, if not most, of the private recipients of charity are victims of misfortune or of lack of opportunity, and are not fully responsible for the evil plight in which they stand, this is not the case with an organised self-governing community, a City or a State.Such a society is able, out of its own resources, if it chooses to secure and use them, to supply for itself all its own legitimate needs.It has a far larger self-sufficiency for meeting all ordinary emergencies and for following an economy of self-development and progress, than has the individual citizen.For it can supply its needs out of the social income which its collective life is constantly assisting to produce, out of that very surplus which, wrongly allowed to flow, unearned, into the coffers of rich individuals, is the very fund used for this debasing public charity.

§8.The clear recognition of these truths is closely germane to our central consideration in this chapter, viz., the question whether there can be evoked in the common consciousness a flow of true social or cooperative feeling strong and steady enough to evoke from individual citizens a sufficient voluntary efficiency in production.No absolutely convincing answer to the question is at present possible.But, if any such experiment is to be tried hopefully, it can only be done by setting Property upon an intelligible moral and social basis, so that it passes into the possession of him to whom it is really 'proper', in the sense that he has put something of himself into its making.Only by resolving unearned into earned income, so that all Property is duly earned either by individuals or by societies, can an ethical basis be laid for social industry.So long as property appears to come miraculously or capriciously, irrespective of efforts or requirements, and so long as it is withheld as irrationally, it is idle to preach 'the dignity of labour' or to inculcate sentiments of individual self-help.

When all Property is visibly justified, alike in origin and use, the rights of property will for the first time be respected, for they will be for the first time respectable.To steal, to cheat, to sweat, to cadge or beg, will be considered shameful, not because the law forbids, but because such acts will be felt by all to be assaults upon the personality of another.