Deeds that are good, honorable and fair are those that we generally describe as having good moral quality. Of these deeds, works of charity are often considered to be among the most respectable.

Indeed, charity is the best of what humanity can be. Yet many persons in the economics department of our university see dangers in charitable works, which for them become persuasive reasons not to contribute.

They push their great blunder even further to proclaim the moral philosophy, upon which our beloved charitable spirit is based, to be cripplingly defective.

Knowing that the charitable spirit is truly the most heavenly expression of humanity, I shall defend it with as much zeal as I can muster.

First the dangers of charitable works must be inspected to reveal that they are indeed fallacies. The most often proclaimed of these untruths is the intolerably cruel Social Darwinism theory.

The foes of charity look to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to illustrate their misguided point, transplanting “survival of the fittest” from the natural world to the world of human action. They say that people with the best abilities will be able to survive longer and produce more effectively than those without.

Charity interferes with this “natural” action, allowing lesser individuals to live lengthy lives and reproduce while passing on their lesser traits.

Only the cruelty of this line of reasoning is more unforgivable than its falsity. Every human being, no matter what genetic makeup, ability to survive or content of character has the dignity reserved for the human person.

So long as he or she wishes to survive and poses no serious threat to another individual, he or she deserves every aid we can possibly give. Such is the case with the poor and recipients of charity.

It is at this point necessary to mention that when charity becomes public, when it is no longer the action of consenting adults, when it is coerced, it is no longer charity.

It has become something entirely different and not the topic of this inquiry.

Now we must secure the moral philosophy from which our charitable spirit springs. I believe it is safe to say that moral feeling is a product of the conscience of an individual.

When a person with a well-functioning conscience does something immoral, or fails to take the most moral course of action, he feels emotional pain in the form of regret.

Such is the case when a charitable individual is not able to help everyone or fails to be as charitable as he can be.

So long as a charitable person feels regret for not being able to be the most charitable possible, charity is still the most moral course of action.