The brief characterization of philanthropy which we are testing was two-fold. It declared philanthropy to be a free gift and a gift to need. Just as the one qualification of the act was that it must be in no way exacted so the one qualification of the recipient was that his candidacy must consist only in need. Does this also hold true in our own country and our own time? Surely it is plain beyond any call for proof that only that is charity which is bestowed where need appoints the recipient. Free gifts are made to the prosperous, there is mutual helpfulness among equals, there are services prompted by loyalty and personal affection, but these, though unforced, are not called charity. But it will not do to dwell too much on the negative implications of “need,” on deprivation or suffering. We might almost avoid that rather misleading word and say that a gift is charity only when the outstanding circumstance is occasion for it. But it is a familiar observation that ardors or privations which are accepted as the order of life while we see no prospect of remedy become conscious hardships at the mere rumor of succor and so it necessarily happens that the very act of service or relief prompted only by its own fitness is the creator of an ex-post-facto need even where the situation previously scarcely merited so strong a name. Charity is not, however, preoccupied with material need only or with physical suffering or any other one phase of life. Moral redemption, intellectual opportunity, artistic realization--these also have come within its purview. It may follow mortal man into his every predicament and minister to his hungers of whatever sort. Only if we keep this well in mind will we be justified in associating it with so negative a term as need. It is the unconscious champion of the perfectibility of man. “The normal life,” “our common inheritance,” “humanity in whatever form,” “the rights of the humblest individual”--these are its commonplaces that have lost significance from frequent and often perfunctory repetition. But the fact that they are the commonplaces of the subject is in itself significant. The commonplaces of all subjects are not of that sort.