Altruism: Its Nature and Varieties

by George Herbert Palmer

But it should not be reckoned as generosity. Should we not, too, in estimating the altruistic worth of gifts deduct the many seeming gifts which are prompted by shame? When asked for a subscription, I cannot well refuse and continue to hold my place in public esteem. Noblesse oblige. One must pay for dignity. It will not do, then, to assume that giving is always an altruistic act. It may be. Yet even where it is genuinely addressed to improving the condition of some needy person, the danger is not absent of lowering the independence of that other, of making him through our will our conscious inferior, and accordingly implying disparagement in our very bounty. If in giving we always keep the better end of the transaction for ourselves and hand the poorer to another, few adjustments of social life will call for more tact.

Yet we are all of us receivers and generally manage to be such without loss of dignity. 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. This is the condemnation of “tipping,” that abominable practice introduced from countries more servile than ours. It cheapens him who gives and him who takes. I see only four occasions where the acceptance of money is compatible with manhood.

Where misery is so abject that self-help is impossible it is no disgrace to confess inferiority and lean on a supporting arm. Only we must insist that as strength returns the arm be withdrawn. Permanent invalidism is an insidious danger. The second and best accredited ground for taking money honorably is that of money earned. Here I give as much as I receive. Each of the two parties at some cost gets what he desires and each gives with reference to another’s need. No doubt there are degrees of dignity in the work done. If as a physician I sell intellectual power and special knowledge, I am naturally honored more than if as a day laborer I sell only physical exertion. But work and wages are in themselves honorable, so that if ten cents is of more consequence to me than getting my hands dirty, I am not disgraced by blacking another man’s shoes.

A third case is of almost equal importance, though more complicated and more liable to error. We may accept money in trust, receiving it from an individual and returning its results to the public. I have already spoken of this in connection with scholarship aids. Aids for advanced research, whether from the government or private foundations, are of the same nature. To be selected for such aid is a high honor, justified, however, only by the receiver’s proving himself a good transmitter. He should regard the money as given not to him but through him and be sure that ultimately it reaches some mark other than himself. This may be accomplished by returning an equal sum to the source from which the aid came, by helping some other person equally needy, or by dedicating to public service powers raised by such aid from ordinary to superior rank. 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. In such unabashed dependence most of us spent our early years. And if as we grew strong fewer gifts of money came to us, their place was taken by loving tokens more subtle, more pervasive, and coming from more sources. Possibly we may say that only love and exchange make the taking of money permissible, and that my first and third grounds are only special cases of these two. It has been well said that there can be true giving only where the two parties ideally change places: the giver so putting himself in the receiver’s place that he feels the afforded relief a personal gain; and the receiver sharing the pleasure which under the circumstances the giver must feel. There is always, however, a difference in the way we accept what comes by exchange and what comes by love. In the former our thought is fixed on what is received, in the latter on him who gave.

Such are the characteristics of the second stage of altruism. I proposed to study that great principle from three points of view which would show the successive steps by which, without injury to the individual, it goes on to completeness. At the very beginning of life, and ever after, we are called on to pay attention to others and to subject ourselves to restrictions for their sake. We find ourselves related or conjunct beings, and on our frank acceptance of these relations our power and peace depend. Without the restraints of manners life would be, as Hobbes said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But the ever-present altruism here is imperfect because primarily dictated by the desire to protect ourselves. The separate self and the conjunct self are not necessarily united in manners. The form of altruism may be kept for protective purposes when there is nothing of it within.

The next higher stage, however, starts from within, the giver seeking to promote another’s welfare at the cost of his own. But there is always uncertainty in accomplishing this; it extends at best only to brief portions of life, is impossible wherever rational claim enters, and never escapes a suggestion of haughty disparagement. The trouble in both of these stages is, after all, the same. Alter and ego have been conceived as distinct, and getting has been separated from giving. But surely this is unnecessary. There are mutual situations in life where each of two parties is at once giver and receiver. The single self may be entirely at one with the conjunct, the conjunct with the single. Only so in mutuality can altruism become complete. To explaining this curious situation I shall devote my remaining chapters. But before doing so I wish to turn back and make atonement for a certain erroneous light in which I have placed these earlier stages.

When I was analyzing manners my readers must have felt that those are not the manners with which they are familiar. They have never felt the need of barriers between friends or thought of manners as a protective agency. Nor in gifts have they come upon my perplexities. Giving and receiving have seemed to them matters usual and pleasant, and no notion of superiority or inferiority has entered their heads.

No doubt this is a more frequent experience than that just described. Yet my account is correct and important. It states the minimum of altruism which necessarily enters into manners, what they are when taken by themselves and unaffected by any higher range of our being. As soon as we become acquainted with giving, it reacts on this earlier stage and fills it with new meaning. Egoistic elements are softened. Manners are used as an opportunity for tactful giving. An atmosphere of kindness takes the place of restraint, the formal manners I have described being reserved for formal occasions. Fortunately this higher civilization is now wide-spread. Yet we can still detect what I would call the guarded manners of some persons and set them in contrast to the generous manners of others. People of guarded manners are ever mindful of their own dignity, hold themselves somewhat aloof, and make much of punctilio. Those of generous manners are ready to spend themselves freely for the pleasure of those about them and seem able to save any occasion from dulness with their stores of information, wit, song, and lively anecdote. These persons look after those less accustomed to society and unobtrusively help them on. But even their admirable work is exceeded by those accustomed to mutuality. These give us no impression of wealthy persons imparting to us their stores. Their work is quieter. Their manners might be called friendly. They set every one at ease and do not so much give as share, appearing as much interested in our affairs as we could be in theirs. In their presence we are simpler, cleverer, and less provincial than we had believed ourselves to be.

In a similar way, under the influence of mutuality gifts become transformed. Condescension disappears. The favor is on both sides. A giver has enjoyed something so much that he wants his pleasure shared. Will we take part with him? There is no stooping, no handing down to one below. The two parties are on a level, joined in a mutual act. “Will you do me the favor to accept this?” is both the language and the feeling of the giver.