Giving to Those Who Cannot Repay

So our humanity has to be kept intact, if we want to be rightly called human beings. And what is keeping our humanity, other than loving another person because he is a person, and the same as we are? Quarreling and division, then, are not in keeping with human nature, and that saying of Cicero’s is true — that a human being, as long as he obeys nature, cannot injure another human being. So if it is against nature to injure a person, it must be in keeping with nature to do a person good; and anyone who fails to do it strips himself of the name of human, since relieving another person’s need and danger is what humanity is for. [a]

I have a question, then, for those who think it is no part of a wise man to be moved and to pity. If a man were seized by some wild animal and begged an armed man for help, do they think he ought to be rescued or not? They are not shameless enough to deny that what humanity demands and requires ought to be done. And if someone were surrounded by fire, or crushed under a collapsing building, or sinking in the sea, or swept off by a river — would they say it is no part of a human being to help him? They are not human themselves if they say so, for there is no one who can be exempt from dangers of this kind. Yes, of course, they will tell us it is the part of a human being, and of a brave one too, to save a man who is on the point of dying.

Well then. If in accidents of that sort, which put a life at risk, they grant that giving help is the work of humanity, what reason is there to think help should be withheld when a person is suffering from hunger, thirst, or cold? These things stand naturally on a level with those accidents and call for one and the same humanity. Yet they make a distinction between them, because they measure everything not by the truth itself but by present usefulness. They hope that the people they rescue from danger will pay the favor back; and since they have no such hope in the case of the needy, they reckon that whatever they spend on people like that is thrown away. Hence that detestable line of Plautus:

But perhaps the poet was speaking in character.

And what does Marcus Tullius say in his books On Duties? Does he not advise that lavish giving should not be practiced at all? These are his words: “Lavish giving that comes out of our own estate drains the very spring of our generosity; and so generosity is destroyed by generosity, since the more people you practice it toward, the less able you will be to practice it toward many.” And a little further on he also says: “But what is more foolish than to act in such a way that you can no longer go on doing what you do gladly?” This professor of wisdom plainly holds people back from acts of kindness. He advises them to guard their property carefully and keep their strongbox safe rather than follow justice. And when he saw that this was inhuman and wicked, a little later, in another chapter, as though remorse had taken hold of him, he put it this way: “Still, there are times when we must give lavishly; this kind of generosity is not to be rejected altogether, and we must give from our property to suitable people when they need help.” What does “suitable” mean? Plainly, people who are able to pay the favor back and return it.

If Cicero were alive now, I would certainly cry out: Here, Marcus Tullius, here you have wandered off from true justice — and you took it away with a single word, when you measured the duties of piety and of humanity by usefulness. For we are not to spend our generosity on suitable people, but as far as we possibly can on unsuitable ones. What you do without hope of any return — that is what will be done with justice, with piety, and with humanity.

This is that true and genuine justice, of which you say you possess no solid, lifelike likeness. You yourself cry out in many places that virtue is not for hire, and in your books On the Laws you admit that generosity is free of charge, in these words: “Nor is there any doubt that the man who is called generous and open-handed has duty in view, and not advantage.” Why then do you spend your generosity on suitable people, unless it is so that you may collect a reward afterward? With you, then, as the author and teacher of justice, anyone who is not a suitable person will waste away in nakedness, thirst, and hunger; and men who are rich and stocked to the point of luxury will not lift a finger for him in his last extremity.

If virtue does not charge a fee — if, as you say, she is to be sought for her own sake — then value justice, who is the mother and chief of the virtues, at her own price, and not by your advantage. Give above all to the man from whom you hope for nothing back. Why do you pick and choose people? Why do you look at the shape of their bodies? Whoever it is that begs from you is to be counted a human being by you, because he counts you one. Throw away those outlines and sketches of justice, and hold on to justice herself, true and modeled from the life. Be generous to the blind, the maimed, the lame, the destitute, who must die unless you are generous to them. They are useless to men, but they are of service to God, who keeps them alive, who gives them breath, who grants them the light.

Cherish the lives of other people as far as you are able, and hold them up by your kindness, so that they are not snuffed out. Anyone who can help a man on the point of dying, and does not, kills him. But these men neither hold on to their own nature nor know what reward there is in this; and so, while they are afraid of losing, they lose, and they fall into the very thing they were most guarding against, so that whatever they spend is either lost outright or does them good for the briefest time only. For those who refuse a small gift to the wretched — who want to keep their humanity at no cost to themselves — squander their property, and either buy themselves frail and perishable things or else gain nothing at all by a great loss.

And what must be said about the men who, carried away by the crowd’s shallow favor, pour out on the staging of public shows fortunes that would be enough even for great cities? Must we not call them senseless and mad? They lavish on the people what is lost to themselves and what none of the people it is lavished on actually receives. All pleasure is short and perishable, and the pleasure of the eyes and ears above all; so people either forget what somebody else spent and feel no gratitude for it, or they even take offense if the crowd’s whim is not satisfied. The upshot is that the most foolish of men have bought themselves harm at the price of harm; or, if they have managed to please, they get nothing more than empty favor and a few days’ talk. So every day the estates of the most trivial men are poured out on things nobody needs.

Do those men act more wisely, then, who present their fellow citizens with more useful and lasting gifts — the ones who put up public buildings and look for a lasting memory of their name? Not even they act rightly, in burying their property in the ground. The memory of them confers nothing on the dead, and their works are not eternal: they are either thrown down and destroyed by a single earthquake, or burned up in a chance fire, or overthrown by some enemy attack, or at the very least they rot and fall apart from sheer length of time. For, as the orator says, there is nothing made by the work of a man’s hand that length of time does not weaken and destroy. But this justice we are speaking of, and mercy, flourish more with every day that passes.

Those, then, do better who spend their generosity on their tribesmen and their clients, since they do bestow something on human beings and do them good. Still, that is not true and just generosity, because there is no conferring of a benefit where there is no necessity. So whatever is given, for the sake of popularity, to people who are not in need is thrown away — or else it is paid back with interest, and then it is not the conferring of a benefit at all. And although it pleases the people it is given to, it is still not just, because if it is not done, no harm follows. The one sure and true work of generosity, therefore, is to support the needy and the useless.