All of our most vexing moral problems are those in which benefit to some must be weighed against benefit to others. Shall a man who is needed by his family risk his life to save a ne'er-do-well? Shall we insist that people unhappily married shall endure their wretchedness and forego the possibility of a happier union in order that heedlessness and license may not be encouraged in the lives of others? Life is full of such two- sided problems; it is not enough that an act may bring good to some, it must be the act that brings most good to most.
(2) An apparently altruistic act, dictated by sympathy, and productive of happiness, may not be for the ultimate good of the very person made happy. To give everything they want to children is inevitably to "spoil" them, as we rightly say; to spoil their own happiness in the long run as well as their usefulness to others. To condone another's sin and save him the unpleasantness of rebuke or the inflicting of a penalty is often the worst thing that could be done to him. To give alms to a beggar may mean to assist his moral degeneration and in the long run increase his misery.
(3) Even when an act superficially egoistic conflicts with one that seems altruistic, the greatest good of the community often dictates the former. There is, as Trumbull used to put it, a "duty of refusing to do good." A man who can best serve the common good by concentrating his strength on that work where his particular ability or training makes him most effective, may be justified in refusing other calls upon his energies, however intrinsically worthy. An Edison would be doing wrong to spend his afternoons in social service, a Burbank has no right to diminish his resources by giving a public library. Emerson deserves our commendation for refusing to be inveigled into the various causes that would have drafted his time and strength. Even to the anti-slavery agitation he refused his services, saying, "I have quite other slaves to free than those Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts far back in the brain of man, which have no watchman or lover or defender but me." This brings us to the question how far a man may legitimately live a self- contained life. Certainly there is a measure of truth in Goethe's saying, "No man can he isolates himself"; in Ibsen's "The most powerful man is he who is most alone"; and in Matthew Arnold's
"Alone the sun rises, and alone Spring the great streams."
A multiplicity of interests distracts the soul and often confuses our ideals. By keeping free from social burdens some men, like Kant, have accomplished tasks of unusual magnitude.
On the other hand, we can match Goethe's assertion with another of his own: "A talent forms itself in solitude, a character in the stream of the world." Isolation tends almost inevitably to narrowness, to an abnormal and cramped outlook, to willfulness or Pharisaism, and usually to loneliness and depression. The only pervasively happy life for man is the life of cooperation and loyalty. We may well "withdraw into the silence," take our daily communion with God in our closets, or our forty days in the wilderness, to win clearer vision and steadier purpose. But solitude should, in normal cases, be only an interlude of rest, or a quiet maturing for service. The ideal is perhaps expressed in Wordsworth's sonnet on Milton:
"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart. …. And yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
The organization of life implies a criticism of and control over altruistic as well as egoistic impulses. There is nothing inherent in the fact of a good being OTHERS' good to make it necessarily the greatest good in a given situation. The ultimate criterion must always be the greatest good of the greatest number; but an altruistic as well as an egoistic impulse may stand in the way of that end. Our altruistic inclinations are often perverted, non-representative, a matter of instinctive and irrational sympathy or shortsighted impulse. And so, while one of the great tasks of moral education is to make men unselfish, that alone is not enough; unselfishness must be directed by reason and tact, rendered far-sighted and intelligent.
What mental and moral obstacles hinder altruistic action?
Although an altruistic impulse is not necessarily a right impulse to follow, there are a great many altruistic duties which are clear and summoning; and it is a never ending disappointment to the man of social conscience to behold the apathy wherewith obvious social duties are regarded. It will be worthwhile to pause and note the chief mental and moral obstacles that prevent a more general devotion to social betterment.