JUSTICE

 There are many earnest souls occupied in trying to do people good.

 

There are nine million societies, more or less, organized to improve and to ameliorate.

 

There are preachers, missionaries¹, evangelists, reformers, exhorters, viewers-with-pride, and pointers-with-alarm without number wrestling with sinners.

 

All forms of industry are booming these days in the U. S. A., but the uplift business is still several laps ahead.

 

It seems ungracious to say a word to any enthusiastic person who is engaged in so laudable an enterprise as that of rescuing the perishing, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick.

 

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And yet, when you take time to think right through to the bottom of things, you must come to the conclusion that there is but one real, radical² and effective way to help your fellow-men, and that is the way called justice.

 

If I want to redeem³ the world I can come nearer my object, and do less harm, by being just toward myself and just toward everybody else, than by “doing good” to people.

 

The only untainted charity is justice.

 

Often our ostensible⁴ charities serve but to obscure and palliate great evils.

 

Conventional charity drops pennies in the beggar’s cup, carries bread to the starving, distributes clothing to the naked. Real charity, which is justice, sets about removing the conditions that make beggary, starvation, and nakedness.

 

Conventional charity plays Lady Bountiful; 140 justice tries to establish such laws as shall give employment to all, so that they need no bounty⁵.

 

Charity makes the Old Man of the Sea feed sugar-plums to the poor devil he is riding and choking; justice would make him get off his victim’s back.

 

Conventional charity piously⁶ accepts things as they are, and helps the unfortunate; justice goes to the legislature and changes things.

 

Charity swats the fly; justice takes away the dung-heaps that breed flies.

 

Charity gives quinine in the malarial⁷ tropics; justice drains the swamps.

 

Charity sends surgeons and ambulances and trained nurses to the war; justice struggles to secure that internationalism that will prevent war.

 

Charity works among slum wrecks⁸; justice 141 dreams and plans that there be no more slums.

 

Charity scrapes the soil’s surface; justice subsoils.

 

Charity is affected⁹ by symptoms; justice by causes.

 

Charity assumes evil institutions and customs to be a part of “Divine Providence,” and tearfully works away at taking care of the wreckage¹⁰; justice regards injustice¹¹ everywhere, custom-buttressed and respectable or not, as the work of the devil, and vigorously attacks it.

 

Charity is timid and is always passing the collection-box; justice is unafraid and asks no alms, no patrons, no benevolent¹² support.

 

“It is presumed,” says Henry Seton Merriman, “that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to 142 interfere¹³ with his neighbor’s affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.”

 

The best part of the human race does not want help, nor favor, nor charity; it wants a fair chance and a square deal.

 

Charity is man’s kindness.

 

Justice is God’s.

The End

1 missionaries   

n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Some missionaries came from England in the Qing Dynasty. 清朝时，从英国来了一些传教士。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The missionaries rebuked the natives for worshipping images. 传教士指责当地人崇拜偶像。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

3 redeem   

v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等）

参考例句：

• He had no way to redeem his furniture out of pawn.他无法赎回典当的家具。
• The eyes redeem the face from ugliness.这双眼睛弥补了他其貌不扬之缺陷。

4 ostensible   

adj.(指理由)表面的，假装的

参考例句：

• The ostensible reason wasn't the real reason.表面上的理由并不是真正的理由。
• He resigned secretaryship on the ostensible ground of health.他借口身体不好，辞去书记的职务。

5 bounty   

n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与

参考例句：

• He is famous for his bounty to the poor.他因对穷人慷慨相助而出名。
• We received a bounty from the government.我们收到政府给予的一笔补助金。

6 piously   

adv.虔诚地

参考例句：

• Many pilgrims knelt piously at the shrine.许多朝圣者心虔意诚地在神殿跪拜。
• The priests piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn.教士们虔诚地唱了一首赞美诗，把这劫夺行为神圣化了。

7 malarial   

患疟疾的，毒气的

参考例句：

• Malarial poison had sallowed his skin. 疟疾病毒使他皮肤成灰黄色。
• Standing water like this gives malarial mosquitoes the perfect place to breed. 像这样的死水给了传染疟疾的蚊子绝佳的繁殖地点。

8 wrecks   

n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉

参考例句：

• The shores are strewn with wrecks. 海岸上满布失事船只的残骸。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• My next care was to get together the wrecks of my fortune. 第二件我所关心的事就是集聚破产后的余财。 来自辞典例句

9 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

10 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

11 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

12 benevolent   

adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的

参考例句：

• His benevolent nature prevented him from refusing any beggar who accosted him.他乐善好施的本性使他不会拒绝走上前向他行乞的任何一个乞丐。
• He was a benevolent old man and he wouldn't hurt a fly.他是一个仁慈的老人，连只苍蝇都不愿伤害。

13 interfere   

v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰

参考例句：

• If we interfere, it may do more harm than good.如果我们干预的话，可能弊多利少。
• When others interfere in the affair,it always makes troubles. 别人一卷入这一事件，棘手的事情就来了。