And, even when you find them,
It’s wise and kind to be somewhat blind,
And search for the light behind them.
(351)
See Other Side, The.
Charity, Inadequate—See [Injustice].
CHARITY, LOGIC OF
Put a Chinaman into your hospital and he will get treated. You may lie awake at night drawing up reasons for doing something different with this disgusting Chinaman—who somehow is in the world and is thrown into your care, your hospital, your thought—but the machinery of your own being is so constructed that if you take any other course with him than that which you take with your own people, your institution will instantly lose its meaning; you would not have the face to beg money for its continuance in the following year. The logic of this, which, if you like, is the logic of self-protection under the illusion of self-sacrifice, is the logic which is at the bottom of all human progress. The utility of hospitals is not to cure the sick. It is to teach mercy. The veneration for hospitals is not because they cure the sick, it is because they stand for love, and responsibility.—John Jay Chapman.
(352)
CHARITY RESPECTED