George Herbert Palmer

“ I like this gift and love the giver. An exchange of terms in either of these sentences would make moral nonsense. Liking touches only the surface; I like strawberries. Loving goes all through; I love my old servant. Of course, then, loving includes liking, though liking may or may not be accompanied by loving; and equally, of course, loose talkers, who do not know what they mean, will try to be impressive by using the weightier word. I love automobiling, I love the opera, I love ice-cream; these are all forms of silly exaggeration which no one will seriously defend. ”

“ Shall I by adding a fresh power to myself strengthen those I already possess? By taking this path, rich in a certain sort of good as it undoubtedly is, shall I be diverted from paths where my special goods lie? Here I am, a student of ethics. A friend calls and tells me of the charms of astronomy, a study undoubtedly majestic and delightful. Since I desire to take all knowledge for my province, why not hurry off at once to study astronomy? ”

“ Such steadying friends will not be a large company and should be chosen deliberately, not through juxtaposition, but on grounds of merit and adaptation to our needs. Closer than these, however, should come our intimates, one or two, those to whom we give whole-hearted love. From such an intimate we hide nothing, not even our faults. To him we express our half-thoughts, make up our minds in company with his, find excellence easy in his presence and yet, to our daily astonishment, see that he obtains as much from us as we from him. Him we love. ”

“ In all good I too find satisfaction of desire. Only, though true, the definition is in my judgment vague and inadequate. For we shall still need some standard to test the goodness of desires. They themselves may be good, and some of them are better than others. It is good to eat candy, to love a friend, to hate a foe, to hear the sound of running water, to practice medicine, to gather wealth, learning, or postage stamps. But though each of these represents a natural desire, they cannot all be counted equally good. They must be tried by some standard other than themselves. ”

“ Equivalence should be brought about. In some way the one benefited should put back what he has received. If he allows it to stick in himself, untransmitted, he is disgraced.
I reserve to the last the completest ground of acceptance, love. Where love is, there is no superior or inferior, no giver or receiver. The two make up a conjunct self with mutual gain. Or shall we say that he who loves delights to think of himself as inferior, prides himself on it, and would be ashamed not to look up in glowing dependence? To him, therefore, gifts bring no disparagement, but happy gratitude. ”

“ It is true no really wise man ever was on earth, or ever will be. But that is the very reason why we are all so impassioned for wisdom, because every bit we seize only opens the door to more. If we could get it in full, if some time or other, knowing that we are now wise, we could sit down in our armchairs with nothing further to do, it would be a death blow to our colleges. Nobody would attend them or care for wisdom longer. An aim which one can reach, and discover to be finally ended, moves only children. ”

“ Under what circumstances may we and may we not preserve our self-respect and still take money? If a stranger passing me on the street hands me a five-dollar bill, I should feel myself disgraced if it went into my pocket. If one I did not know wrote from a distant State his enjoyment of a book of mine, enclosing a check, I should return the check. If finding a person in distress and helping him he offered me money, I should refuse it. Independence is dear to most of us and we do not care to part with it on grounds so casual. ”

“ In asceticism we prize self-sacrifice for its own sake. We hunt out what we value most; we judge what would most completely fulfill our needs; and then we abolish it. Abolish it for what? For nothing but the mere sake of abolishing. This is to turn morality upside down; and in place of the Christian ideal of abounding life, to set up the pessimistic aim of impoverishment. There is nothing of this kind in self-sacrifice. Here we assert ourselves, our conjunct selves. We estimate what will be best for the community of man and seek to further this at whatever cost to our isolated individuality. ”

“ Not that in friendship we set up such limits by our own volition, as is done in partnership. The limits are ingrained in the persons,104 and beyond them we know it is futile to press. When two natures have certain sides that fit, to the advantage of each, a friendship springs up. But how embarrassing when some friend whom we greatly value has limitations which oblige us to pause and he, not perceiving them, attributes to our adverse will the failure in full mutual accord! Because of its narrow bounds and because it is sought for individual gain, friendship is of far wider currency than love. ”

“ They run after fame, because they can never be quite famous. They may become known to every person on their street, but there is the street beyond. Or to every one in their town, but there are other towns. Or if to every person on earth, there are still the after ages. Entire fame cannot be had; and exactly on that account it stirs every impulse of our nature in pursuit.
Now the aim at personal perfection is precisely of this sort. As servants of righteousness we cannot accept any other precept than "Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." ”

“ So nearly does generosity become identified with goodness that if I should ask a man whether John Smith was good to him yesterday I should be understood to ask if he gave unselfish attention to that man’s affairs. Goodness in this sense, the disposition to give, will in the popular mind cover a multitude of sins. In how many stories have past ages taken pleasure where the robber hero, crafty, merciless, and generous, bestows upon the poor plunder taken from the rich. The man ready to give, whatever else his quality, seemed to our ancestors always to deserve admiration. ”

“ The common mode of meeting it is to leave it thus paradoxical. Self-sacrifice banishes rationality and is a glorious madness. But such a conclusion is a repellent one. How can it be? Reason is man's distinctive characteristic. While brutes act blindly, while the punctual physical universe minutely obeys laws of which it knows nothing, usually it is open to man to judge the path he will pursue. Shall we then say that, though reason is a convenience in all the lower stretches of life, when we reach self-sacrifice, our single awesome height, it ceases? ”

“ So far is the code from fettering individuality that it becomes the channel for its easiest outgo. A graceful gentleman is enviable in his freedom. He is at home anywhere. Every situation has been thought out by society beforehand. With its conclusions he has been long acquainted and in his own way swiftly adapts them to the delicate occasion at hand. There is no surprise, no awkwardness, no loss of dignity. The separate self is not altogether suppressed, but is present everywhere in the service of the conjunct. ”

“ Too easily does our sympathetic and sentimental age, recklessly eulogistic of altruism, hurry into self-sacrifice. Altruism in itself is worthless. That an act is unselfish can never justify its performance. He who would be a great giver must first be a great person. Our men, and still more our women, need as urgently the gospel of self-development as that of self-sacrifice; though the two are naturally supplemental. Our only means of estimating the propriety and dignity of sacrifice is to inquire how closely connected with ourselves is its object. ”

“ It will be noticed what prominence he gives to the negative function of manners, how in depicting generosity he sees the danger of condescension, and how he finds the crowning excellence of manners in that self-forgetting mutuality which sets all at their ease.
“The true gentleman carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast: all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home. ”

“ Most of us in listening to music forget ourselves under its lulling charms, abandon ourselves to its spell, and by it are swept away, perhaps to the infinite, perhaps to an obliteration of all clear thought. Is it not largely because we are so hard pressed under the anxious conditions of modern life that music becomes such an enormous solace and strength? I do not say that no other factors have contributed to the vogue of music, but certainly it is widely prized as an effective means of escape from ourselves. ”

“ More than Manners it hints at insincerity and conduct that hopes to gain something for itself. Beware of a polite man. He is likely to use you for his own ends. Might we then talk of Good Breeding? When any one calls me well-bred he praises my parents, not me. The excellence on which I pride myself has apparently come from their training. What shall we say of Courtesy? That it is a term of dignity, but suggests stooping. The one with whom I deal is accounted my inferior. Or Gentlemanliness? To call a young fellow a gentleman makes his heart throb. ”

“ Yet obviously self- consciousness involves something like a deadlock. For how can one consciously exert himself to be unconscious and try not to try? We cannot arrange our lives so as to have no arrangement in them, and when shaking hands with a friend, for example, be on our guard against noticing. Once locked up in this vicious circle, we seem destined to be prisoners forever. That is what constitutes the anguish of the situation. The most tyrannical of jailers—one's self—is over us, and from his bondage we are powerless to escape. ”

“ It knows no persons, or rather it knows every one as a person and insures each his share in the common good. All the altruism of love is here, but without love’s arbitrary selection and limited interest. We do wrong in thinking of justice as chiefly concerned with penalties. These are incidental, inflicted on those who refuse to find their gain in the gain of others. The main work of justice is its equal distribution of advantage and its insistence that each individual shall be faithful to what he undertakes for the benefit of all. ”

“ VII What I have set myself to make plain in this series of graded examples is simply this: self-sacrifice is not something exceptional, something occurring at crises of our lives, something for which we need perpetually to be preparing ourselves, so that when the great occasion comes we may be ready to lay ourselves upon its altar. Such romanticism distorts and obscures. Self-sacrifice is an everyday affair. By it we live. It is the very air of our moral lungs. Without it society could not go on for an hour. ”

“ We do not act or speak precisely as if alone. In all our bearing there is a marked adjustment of one personality to another. I take on the color of him before whom I stand. I feel his psychological conditions and square myself accordingly. That is, I at once perceive that he and I are not quite independent. An acknowledgment of a certain community between us must be established before either of us can be at ease. Such acknowledgment may have a wide or narrow scope, but it will always imply regard for another for his own sake and not merely regard for my sake. ”

“ Perhaps the most admirable case of self-sacrifice is that in which no single person appears who is profited by our loss. The scholar, the artist, the scientific man dedicate themselves to the interests of undifferentiated humanity. They serve their undecipherable race, not knowing who will obtain gains through their toils. In their sublime benefactions they study the wants of no individual person, not even of themselves. ”

“ When I try to detach myself from my surroundings I know I am attempting an impossibility. How much would there be left of me were there no one but this central ego, none with whom I might communicate, no language prepared for communication or thought, no common affections, interests, or undertakings? Evidently we are from the start social beings. If with the early moralists we make the opposite assumption, our subsequent interest in our fellow men will never quite clear itself of artificiality and mistake. ”

“ It breeds instincts and not understanding. So inwoven has goodness become with the very web of life that it is hard to disentangle. We cannot easily detach it from encompassing circumstance, look at it nakedly, and say what in itself it really is. Never appearing in practical affairs except as an element, and always intimately associated with something else, we are puzzled how to break up that intimacy and give to goodness independent meaning. It is as if oxygen were never found alone, but only in connection with hydrogen, carbon, or some other of the eighty elements which compose our globe. ”

“ No one is so generous as he, so ready for self-sacrifice. To please and benefit the loved one is all his care. Let what he gives have cost him little, and he is dissatisfied. He longs to suffer for her sake. These are not marks of self-seeking. But they do indicate that the lover has reached a new conception of self, for which he is even more ardent than ever he was for the old. That old separate self he now despises, and knows that only as he loses it in the loved one will he have any worth. Until he has thoroughly cut himself off from his own detached interests he will be unworthy of her. ”

“ Could I fully realize myself, I should have fulfilled all righteousness, and this view is sanctioned by the Great Teacher when he asks, "What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"—his life, his soul, his self. If any one fully believed this, and lived as if all his desires were fulfilled so long as he had opportunities of self-development, he might be said to have insured himself against every catastrophe. ”

“ He draws profit, it is true, from another man’s pocket, but he does not, like the gambler, stop there. He puts back into that pocket a little more than the equivalent of what he took out. The gambler breaks up this mutuality and lives as a bandit by attack. Thus dehumanized83 and shut up to his separate self he rots. When trade allows the double gain to drop out of sight, it too becomes gambling and shows the same predatory tendencies. Honest trade is a different matter. Its mutual profit carries altruism through a community more wholesomely than can any arbitrary will. ”