the less bound to suppress it because I
happen to be the person robbed; I am only bound not to be
vindictive--that is, not to allow my personal feelings to make me act
otherwise than I should act if I had no special interest in the
particular case. Adam Smith's favourite rule of the "indifferent
spectator" is the proper one in the case. I should be impartial, and
incline no more to severity than to lenity, because I am forced by
circumstances to act both as judge and as plaintiff. So, in questions
of self-support, it is obviously a fallacy to assume that an action,
directed in the first instance to a man's own benefit, is therefore to
be stigmatised as selfish. On the good Samaritan's principle, a person
should be supported, _ceteris paribus_, by the person who can do
it most efficiently, and in nine cases out of ten that person is
himself. If self-support is selfish in the sense that the service is
directly rendered to self, it is not the less unselfish in so far as it
is necessarily also a service to others. If I keep myself by my labour,
I am preventing a burden from falling upon my fellows. And, of course,
the case is stronger when I include my family. We were all impressed
the other day by the story of the poor boy who got some wretchedly
small pittance by his work, spent a small portion of it upon his own
needs, and devoted the chief part of it to trying to save his mother
and her other children from starvation. Was he selfish? Was he selfish
even in taking something for himself, as the only prop of his family?
What may be the immediate motive of a man when he is working for his
own bread and the bread of his family may often be a difficult
question; but as, in point of fact, he is helping not only himself and
those who depend on him, but also in some degree relieving others from
a burden, his conduct must clearly not be set down as selfish in any
sense which involves moral disapproval.

Let us apply this to the case of competition. The word is generally
used to convey a suggestion of selfishness in a bad sense. We think of
the hardship upon the man who is ousted, as much as of the benefit to
the man who gets in; or perhaps we think of it more. It suggests to us
that one man has been shut out for the benefit of his neighbour; and
that, of course, suggests envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. We
hold that such competition must generate ill-will. I used--when I was
intimately connected with a competitive system a