Fortunately, he did not allow his deeds of brotherly love to be darkened by the shadow of these and kindred thoughts. He brought forward reasons which always ended by triumphing over his cold doubts. Misery was possibly the outcome of inexorable natural laws, but then was not compassion the same? The poor were poor under the pressure of some irresistible force, but did not the charitable act under the same pressure? Moreover, was Wilhelm so sure that he himself was better equipped for the race of life than those unfortunates who went under because they chose a trade for which they were neither mentally nor physically competent, or because, from laziness or obstinacy, they insisted on remaining in Berlin, where nobody wanted them, when a few miles off they might have found all the conditions conducive to their prosperity? How could he know whether he would have been capable of earning his living if his father had not left him a plentifully-spread table? In the rooms that contained so little furniture and so many emaciated human beings, into which his charitable zeal led him every day, he pictured himself, pale and thin, without food, without books; and although he had the harmless vanity to believe that privation and penury would affect him less deeply than the poor devils he visited, the idea that he saw his own face before him, as it might have been had he not had the good luck to be his father's heir opened his hand still wider, and added to the money words of sympathy and comfort, which afforded the recipients--unless they were utterly hardened--as much pleasure as the donation itself.