Matters of every-day life, so familiar that we seldom reflect on them, I have attempted in the preceding chapters to analyze with something like scientific precision. By so doing I have turned them into almost unrecognizable abstractions. In closing, I should like to restore them to their rightful color, and I have searched for a passage which might present the approach of man to man just as we daily see it, with an intimate blending of all three varieties of altruism—pure manners, giving, and mutuality. In a passage from the Eighth Discourse of Cardinal Newman’s Idea of a University I find what I want, expressed in language of extraordinary refinement and accuracy. 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. He has his eyes on all his company: he is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absurd. He can recollect to whom he is speaking. He guards against unseasonable allusions or topics which may irritate. He is seldom prominent in conversation and never wearisome. He makes fight of favors while he does them and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves toward our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned on philosophical principles: he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is destiny. If he engage in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better perhaps, but less educated, minds who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive the adversary, and leave the question more involved than they found it.”
CHAPTER V
MUTUALITY
We have now clearly before us the two imperfect varieties of altruism. While both recognize and honor man’s relation to man, from neither is regard for the separate self excluded. Each may as well be prompted by an egoistic aim as by an altruistic. For though in manners we minutely consider how we may save another from annoyance it is always with the understanding that we are thus ourselves protected. Nor does giving escape a similar self-regard. We cannot make a gift without implying that the receiver has no right to it, without bringing him into dependence, therefore, on our will as his superior. Giving, too, can only intermittently take the place of attention to our own good. It would exhaust itself otherwise. Jesus is reported to have spent thirty years in acquisition, less than three in benefaction. Indeed, unless we heartily valued our own possessions, pleasures, and growth we could never count them fit to constitute gifts. It is not strange, then, that to the natural childlike mind manners are unwelcome and that to the disciplined reflective mind gifts are obnoxious. It is true that these disagreeable features are softened as higher altruistic stages throw back an influence over the lower; the mind disposed to give, for example, transforming guarded manners into generous, or even if trained in mutuality, making them friendly and cordial. In a similar manner, where the conjunct self has taken the place of the separate the proud giver is superseded by the delicate giver. But these facts only make plain the incompleteness of manners and giving when taken by themselves, and demonstrate that altruism to be really known must be studied in that highest stage to which I have given the name of mutuality. To this intricate and important study I now turn.
Giving fails to reach the altruism it seeks because its generosity is confined to one of the two parties engaged, while to the other is assigned the inferior position of egoistic receiver. But is this necessary? May we not conceive of a gift without this blemish, a giving in which each side gives to the other, thus joining giving and getting, and abolishing all inferiority? To show how this may be I am obliged to enter into more detail than in explaining simpler moral situations. I will, accordingly, offer a general definition of mutuality and then take up the successively completer forms in which it is realized.
By mutuality, then, I mean the recognition of another and myself as inseparable elements of one another, each being essential to the welfare of each. This duality of giving has always been recognized as ennobling. Even Jesus did not seek simply to give, but to induce in those to whom he gave a similar disposition. Rightly is it counted higher than simple giving, including, as it does, all which that contains and more.
Such mutuality is most familiar to us in certain cases which for convenience I group together under the name of partnership. In a partnership a specific field is marked out within which persons agree to consider certain of their interests common. When Brown and I form a firm for the sale of shoes it is understood that thenceforth he and I have no separate interest so far as shoes are concerned. The stock in the store does not belong to him or to me; and if some one seeing money in the drawer should ask whose it was, I should have to answer, “It is not mine,” and Brown would similarly disown it. It would be ours. All his would be mine and mine his. Usual thought and speech would require considerable readjustment to fit a condition so new. “I” and “he” would pass largely out of use as no longer of practical significance, “we” taking the place of these separate symbols. “Together” would acquire a more intimate and compulsive meaning. Accordingly, if on some bright morning I were inclined to go shooting instead of appearing at the office at my usual hour, I should know I had no right to the sport without Brown’s concurrence, my time being no longer mine. Mutuality would everywhere supersede private control. All this is familiar enough. Nobody finds it hard to comprehend. But when the moralist urges that higher life is possible only as the separate self becomes merged in a conjunct, it sounds mysterious and seems little likely to occur.
But the partnership principle is wider than the business firm. In some degree it enters into every bargain. Buyer and seller establish a kind of mutuality. Suppose a customer on coming to my store and putting down his five dollars for a pair of shoes should suddenly bethink himself and say: “I wonder if you are not cheating me. That pair of shoes cost you not more than four dollars and seventy-five cents. By your price you are taking twenty-five cents more from my pocket than you are delivering to me.” Might I not answer: “It seems to me it is you who are cheating me. You need those shoes more than you need five dollars. You would give five dollars and a quarter rather than go without them. Are you not, then, returning to my pocket twenty-five cents less than you are receiving?” In reality neither of us has cheated. We have merely made a legitimate profit from one another. Such mutual profit is involved in all good bargaining. It yields a double gain. I gain from my customer and he from me, and both are left in better condition than before. If he had not cared more for the shoes than for five dollars he would not have come to my store. If I had not counted five dollars of greater worth to me than the shoes I should not have parted with them. A curious situation this, where two persons draw advantage from one another! But every sound commercial transaction proceeds on this assumption. In all honest trade there is a gainful partnership.
In my last chapter, after discussing gifts, charity, and the generous soul, I promised to turn to a moral situation higher still, one of purer altruism. Are we then keeping to the order proposed? Can we suppose that a commercial transaction is of a higher order than an act of charity? I believe we can. As we look over the history of civilization we certainly find gifts understood long before trade. The savage is a not ungenerous person. When he takes a fancy to any one he gives pretty freely, not, of course, through any claim or duty but merely in deference to his native feeling. What he cannot conceive is the double gift, a transaction in which each is a gainer. He is ready enough to strip himself of advantage in behalf of one whom he likes and is pleased when he, too, receives a gift; but that one and the same act can yield a mutual gain he apprehends slowly and rudely. Yet on just this condition of mutuality all honest trade is based. It is true I must add the adjective “honest.” One can deceive under the forms of trade as readily as under any other forms. They shelter deception well. In dealing with a customer I may have some special information about the quality of an article which he does not possess. He is therefore at a disadvantage. No one would maintain that all the operations of commerce are of a higher moral order than charity; but it may be said that every honest mercantile transaction shows altruism of a more thoroughgoing kind than a gift does.