For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when
he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making
needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world--made up of perfect people,
there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon the Hibernicism, if there
were, the whole truth could be told without causing pain or enmity. Or
again, in a world where there are dishonest people, a man telling
everything about his schemes, would have them run away with by others,
though in an ideal world, where there were no dishonest people, he could
speak freely. In fact, the necessity of reticence in this connection does
not even depend on the existence of dishonesty: for in a world where
people have to look out for themselves, instead of everybody looking out
for everybody else, a man exposing his plans might hurry the execution of
competing plans on the part of perfectly honest people.
Farther illustration may be sufficiently furnished by the topic in hand.
In the case of most poor folks other than servants, what to do about it
has lately been pretty distinctly settled: the religion of pauperization
is pretty generally set aside: almsgiving, the authorities on ethics now
generally hold, should be restricted to deserving cases--to people
incapacitated by constitution or circumstance from taking proper care of
themselves.
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