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 In a similar manner, where the conjunct self has taken the place of the separate the proud giver is superseded by the delicate giver.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.

This may be made plainer by a contrasted vice. Living long among college students and observing their natural pleasure in all sorts of moral experimentation, I have come to believe gambling the vice most likely to wreck character. All forms of vice are bad enough. It is shocking to see a young man drunk. But drunkenness grows steadily rarer, and, after all, a drinker remains pretty much himself when the fit is off. I have had friends of this sort who when not in liquor showed the same interest in worthy things as other men. But when I see the gambling habit getting hold of a young man I despair of him. For several reasons it is unlikely he will be good for much thereafter. Seldom does a vice or virtue have only a single root. On the one hand the gambler gives up rational modes of guidance, ceases to calculate clearly, lives on the unexpected, and looks for some deliverance to drop from the sky. A hectic anxiety takes possession of him and disorganizes his life. But there are results worse still. Gambling, in contrast with honest trade, admits only a single gain. I can gain nothing for myself except by damaging another. I must directly seek his harm. The tradesman benefits himself through benefiting his customer. His business is grounded on the double gain. He draws profit, it is true, from another man’s pocket, but he does not, like the gambler, stop there. He puts back into that pocket a little more than the equivalent of what he took out. The gambler breaks up this mutuality and lives as a bandit by attack. Thus dehumanized and shut up to his separate self he rots. When trade allows the double gain to drop out of sight, it too becomes gambling and shows the same predatory tendencies. Honest trade is a different matter. Its mutual profit carries altruism through a community more wholesomely than can any arbitrary will.

But the partnership principle runs further still. It is the cement which binds together a multitude of groups. A ship’s crew, a regiment of an army, stands in just this mutual relationship. They represent the will of no one of their members, yet no one must detach his will from the whole. A sailor cannot withdraw to-day because he feels like reading, a soldier because the coming attack is likely to cost his life. Under anarchic influence something like this was lately allowed the Russian soldier, and the army ceased to be. It can exist only as a conjunct affair. Our States were once supposed to have established a Union; but when South Carolina set up a separate will, regardless of the rest, chaos came. How transformed the youngster is when he goes out with the baseball team! He does not mind if he breaks his finger, covers himself with dirt, or becomes utterly exhausted. What does it matter if only the team wins? There is no longer any me. He thinks in conjunct terms. He will not shirk, take himself away and leave the others to their harm.

How far can such a notion of partnership be carried? Evidently to all clubs whose members recognize themselves as also members one of another, each forming no decisions of his own. Would it apply to churches and learned societies? Not altogether, I think. We have hitherto meant by partnership a terminable union of specified persons for a definite time and in reference to a definite end. In scientific societies, and especially in churches, we do not limit numbers and usually expect the union to be a permanent one. This indefiniteness as regards time and persons is no accident. It rightly belongs to unions like these, which aim at developing personality. A baseball team, a ship’s crew, gather a specially trained company for a particular end. When this end is attained the union naturally ceases. Science and righteousness are never attained, but appeal without limitation. Perhaps, then, such internal and personal associations should not be classed as partnerships at all, but that notion should be reserved for unions of a more external and limited sort.

If I am right in this, it may help to explain the hesitation many readers must have felt over my eulogy of business methods as examples of altruism. Certainly we all know that commerce has a barbarous side. Nowhere else among civilized human beings does selfishness become so ruthless. The possibility of this comes through two limitations which partnership sets on mutuality. When Brown and I established our firm we limited the persons involved to himself and me, and even we were to have relations only so far as concerned the sale of shoes. Within these two limits mutuality was complete, but it did not extend beyond. Supported thus by one another, we two were able to contend with the rest of the world as neither could alone. Together we could push our interests with little regard to the general interests of the town. If other trades suffered, we need not care so long as the shoe business flourished, and still less need we care if our prosperity crowded out of existence the shoe store on the opposite side of the street. Such clear limitation of an altruistic horizon is always dangerous. In many restricted unions the danger is noticeable. A family warmly considerate of its own members often shows small sympathy for persons beyond its bounds. A ball club, a secret society will practise trickeries on other leagues which their members as individuals would scorn. In trade, too, the matter is made worse by a second limitation. My partner and I understand that our mutuality operates only with reference to the sale of shoes. We do not merge our lives. We keep a sharp line drawn between them and our business. Possibly enough I may have little respect for Brown. As a person I may think so meanly of him that when he suggests being asked to my house and meeting my wife and children I find an excuse for not inviting him. He is excellent so far as selling shoes is concerned, but personal relations are quite another thing. Here again the narrowing of the field within which mutuality operates lessens its dignity and intensifies its aggressive power.

No wonder, then, we are apt to picture trade as a conscienceless struggle of competitors for private gain. But the picture is disproportionate and erroneous. Savagery is possible here, but so is much else. Commerce has a deep ethical ground and wide ethical opportunities, co-operation being as essential to it as competition. It exists only through service to the community. The mutual relations of partnership are constantly being extended, single trades organizing to promote their common interests, and chambers of commerce overseeing the business of a whole city. Those who engage in trade are no less human beings than their fellows and are continually discovering that honorable and high-minded methods of conducting business are in the long run profitable. The very competitions that arise are useful promoters of efficiency, and the general government stands ready in the background to fix limits beyond which greed shall not go. There are, in short, many circumstances in the life of trade which to a good degree neutralize the limitations which I have pointed out in its application of the principle of mutuality.

That principle, too, runs far beyond the field of partnership. Partnership brings persons into mutual relations only with reference to certain external ends. Brown and I joined only those fragments of our lives which were connected with the sale of shoes. We might join extensive portions, might merge not merely our occupations but all our personal interests. In him I might discover what contributes to my best growth and he find no less in me. In this way we should reach a new species of existence to which the definition of mutuality previously given would apply in a higher sense. I should here recognize another and myself as more completely constituent members of one another, each being essential to the welfare of each. Here no new elements enter which were not included in partnership. There as here identification of interests appears, the abolition of mine and thine, the double gain; only here there is no restriction of the field. The lives are identified throughout their full depth and extent. They do not merely collaborate for a specific purpose.

Such is the attitude of love, so familiar, so mysterious, so potent in developing whatever is best in us. In it both egoism and altruism have ample room. If I loved Brown, I should not hesitate to own that I sought him for my own advantage, though I should also bid him to take of me all he wanted—the more, the better. And I should expect the same double response from him. Edmund Spenser has stated the matter with great precision in his “Hymn in Honor of Beauty”:

Spenser intends by “harmony” what I have meant by mutuality, something where several different parts belong together and reach their full significance in union. If the two hearts are similar and each merely repeats what the other contains, there is no mutual profit. They must fit one another, and in this fitting there is always something of the unknown. They cannot of themselves entirely create the union. The “stars’ consent” must be added. Heaven must shine upon them. Spenser even suggests that their adaptation to one another is not begun in this world, but is merely recognized here as having been ever of old. Once known it brings them full content.

This, then, is the topic to which we now turn. It is that which the ethical teachers of every age have counted fundamental. With Jesus it supersedes all else. Writers as unlike as the Catholic statesman Augustine, the Jew Spinoza, the Puritan Jonathan Edwards see in love the fulfilment of righteousness. “Love God and do as you please,” says Augustine. It is something we all experience and few understand. In it there are paradoxes not found elsewhere. Delicate analysis will be needed to bring out all that it involves, to show, too, how even here limitations creep in. To this puzzling and attractive work I devote the next chapter.