This instance makes evident the uncertain character of giving. However superior in altruistic fulness gifts are to manners, they are unfit, unless supplemented by some other principle, to form a practical rule of life. Let us examine them in detail and see wherein they fail to embody complete altruism. In their very nature I find them to be exceptional, irrational, and condescending; and I will briefly explain each of these points. Giving is occasional and fragmentary. It cannot occupy a life. The great body of our time and attention must be directed upon individual interests. I rise in the morning after eight hours of sleep, go downstairs to breakfast, take my walk for the needed morning exercise, on returning look over my mail and the morning paper, turn to my studies, to my meals, to calling on a friend. It is all egoistic. No doubt during the day I am repeatedly summoned to attend to other people’s affairs. Begging letters, interruptions, engagements of a public and business nature are not absent. They intervene and stand out isolated in my egoistic day. No doubt, too, most of my occupation with myself--in sleep, food, exercise, study--is a necessary preparation for social service. All I am urging is that social service cannot stand alone. It requires a large individualistic background. The care one gives to others is occasional, one might even say exceptional. In order to be able to meet it, our primary and preponderant care must be given to ourselves. Such a thing as interest in altruistic giving, separate from personal gain and established as an independent guiding principle, is altogether impossible. Only at intervals comes the generous act; in general, we are busied with our own affairs. On this inseparability of egoism and altruism I received excellent instruction many years ago out of the mouth of babes and sucklings. A couple of little children, a girl of four and a boy of five years old, had just been tucked into their beds. Their mother in the next room heard them talking. Listening to learn if they needed anything, she found them discussing one of the vast problems for which the infant mind seems to have a natural affinity. They were inquiring why we were ever put into the world. The little girl suggested we might have been sent here to help others. “Why no, indeed, Mabel,” was her big brother’s reply. “Of course not; for then what would others be here for?” Pertinent reflection, putting the answer to one-sided altruism into a nutshell! If our own affairs are worthless, why suppose they can be of worth to others? It is no kindness to bestow on another what has never been found good for ourselves. A gift should cost something. Something properly valued by us we part with for another’s sake. A strong egoistic sense, then, is a condition of altruistic action. The latter cannot cover the whole of a life. No man is benevolent all the time, but exceptionally, at intervals, when regard for himself may safely be withdrawn.