This is an essay on noble deeds, examples of them. We don't use this term very often these days, so some explanation is in order.

To be 'noble' is to be 'high-minded', to be kind and understanding above the norm, to be generous in some act that involves self giving where no reciprocation is asked or expected and the recipient perhaps a total stranger or slight acquaintance in need of help, or some closer acquaintance in need of a great deal of help and self-sacrifice on your part.

It is a trait of character and doesn't necessarily involve wealth and has nothing to do with ancestry. It can exist in a beggar or a child. It is rare but it is universal and to be able to witness it in action is probably the most uplifting and soul-gratifying sight a person can experience in this arena of greed, selfishness and petty pursuits we call society. To be a bystander, a witness, to such an act of pure, unasked for giving can be an unalloyed heart and mind warming delight, a memory lasting forever. To be a participant, on either side of such a deed is ten-fold the joy.

Now to examples. There are a million forms of giving of sacrifice of some part of oneself to another human being for no reason, for no expectation of some kind of reward, defying all economic principles and all of the common human motives that compel us to act for our own gratifications and advancement in life. It's noble because it rises above all these things, above this mortal, transient existence, and so it has no logical explanation. The great mystery is that some individuals have it, feel it and act upon its impulse. The best I can explain is that it's angelic, other-worldly, a spiritual elevation of mind that puts us on a higher plane, which we can't see or understand, but which we know exists, because we can feel it in a tearful flood of emotion.

These examples have no plausible connections except that they all affected me profoundly and stayed in my thoughts vividly over the decades, uncalled for, uninvited, but recurring again and again to my consciousness at random times for no reason. They are scenes from literature.

Here's one from Don Quixote: (book1, chapter11). He and Sancho, who is the most glutinous, small-minded, greedy squire imaginable, meet some goatherds who offer them a simple meal under a tree. Don Quixote begins to discourse far above their level of a past golden age of purity of morals, honor in men and chastity in women, before fraud and deceit and lust existed, and maidens walked the earth almost naked without fear, while the goatherds listen, amazed, gaping, not eating, an example of a fascinating idea captivating minds so much their hunger cravings are set aside a half-hour to hear it. That whole novel is the story of a poor and old man's quest for nobility, however ridiculous the vessel, and his constant misadventures but finally convincing the court of rich nobles that his madness had something to it far surpassing their titles.

Socrates, as a young man, served in the Athenian army and was posted on a few hours guard duty one cold winter night in the mountains, standing motionless in sandals in two feet of snow. He was contemplating some idea so deeply that when his watch was over he stood there motionless till dawn. His fellow soldiers were amazed his legs didn't freeze. But he awoke out of this revery and went to his tent unharmed. Mind over physical reality.

Samuel Johnson was remarkable for acts of nobility. He was near starvation poor for his first ten years in London trying to make his living as a writer. The first book which brought him into notice was a short biography of his recently dead friend, an equally poor, starving poet, Richard Savage. In it, as he describes how Savage was the illegitimate son of a very rich countess and all his appeals to her for small amounts of aid when he was starving were rejected, he still wrote a poem in her honor, which Johnson called "an act of complicated virtue."

Being rowed across the Thames river by a ragged boy (with Boswell, as they were discussing the value of knowledge), he asked the poor lad what he would give to know about the very first sailors, Jason and his Argonauts, the first to dare to sail across the sea, not knowing what they might meet. The boy replies: 'I would give all I have.' Now that's noble.

An active, educated, thinking being lives on a whole other plane of existence. As Pico del Mirandola so succinctly expressed in his brief essay “on the dignity of man”. We can rise to the level of angels if we try. Samuel Johnson seemed to approach this. He wrote the first, complete, most concise English dictionary in a garret in rags, with the best preface of any dictionary, all by himself, getting paid just enough to feed himself and his wife and paying seven starving copyists to put the words in order. When it was complete and his receipts were added up the seven publishers advancing him money for the stipulated cost found they owed him nothing, yet each of them made a huge fortune by the sales. He came up with the phrase, the idea, 'crimes of omission.' That's complex.

He was a moral pillar of society but he did have self-pride and would call a blockhead just that. A famous divine heard him retell a story where a Lord argued a point against him assuming his title had weight, which Johnson refuted, calling him the most prideful man in the nation. The divine meekly said 'I think I might know someone else with equal pride.' Johnson, catching his drift, immediately replied: 'Yes, but mine was defensive pride.' No one had ever conceived that nice discrimination before, but it is perfectly clear and adds a whole new dimension to thought.  

At the age of seventy three he was the most sought after company in England, invited every night to fine dinners for his wit and an intellect so rich it shined and surprised everyone in new ways on each occasion. Even friends that had sat with him a hundred times, all the brightest thinkers and talents of that period, Edmund Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Beauclerk, Malone, Boswell, who thought they’d heard everything, would sup with him again and were again struck, amazed, bowled over by some stray remark he casually dropped, some reflection on life, some story of an old friend painted in such an unexpected light that it affected them to tears or wonder, opening up whole new vistas, whole new avenues of thinking.

I can’t help but include one here, as it comes to my mind immediately. Talking of his poverty stricken, first years in London, as an unknown journalist, he befriended a man named ‘Tom Hervey’, a merchant who took a liking to him and invited him to his house and table for a meal whenever they chanced to meet, perhaps once a week, at a period when he was close to starving to death. The merchant was delighted by his talk. Now, years later, Johnson’s friends had heard of this man, many years dead, as he long had the reputation of being the meanest, greediest merchant in London, cruel to his servants and wife, rude to all customers, without charity or kindness to any, except Johnson. He was a man of no redeeming qualities, whom everybody hated.

The high moral stature of Johnson in later life and his connection with this man baffled their intellects exceedingly, like a mismatch, an impossibility, a puzzle. They talked about it among themselves and convened and cornered him in a parlor one evening and in a group, with their collective courage combined, and dared to ask him how he could possibly befriend this wretch. They expected some long, polished, moral dissertation or some clever twists of reasoning for which he was so famous. He didn’t go there. He answered with one short sentence that stunned them all: “Hervey was a vicious man, but if you call a dog ‘Hervey’ I would love him."

There’s no replying to that, no rebuttal. It’s too human, too emotional, its pure love stripped to its bare essence. He loved the man despite all his faults, unconditionally, completely. They were friends, perhaps the only friend Hervey ever knew. In later life, when Johnson gained fame and a decent living, he maintained in his household a strange set of unfortunate people with no connection to him, who would have been in the streets or a poor house if it weren’t for his kindness. One was a blind woman, peevish and picky in her meals, another a middle-aged woman destitute of relatives and money, abandoned, and one uncouth, ugly, unsociable, would-be doctor, without a degree but with some knowledge of medicine, who humbly administered what aid he could to the poorest wretches in the slums of London, taking nothing in return for the simple medicines in his bag, walking his rounds daily in these dark dens, soothing and helping the helpless. On his death Johnson wrote a heart-rending poem to his memory, a nobody, Robert Levet:

• Condemned to hope's delusive mine,
• As on we toil from day to day,
• By sudden blasts or slow decline
• Our social comforts drop away.
•  
• Well tried through many a varying year,
• See Levet to the grave descend,
• Officious, innocent, sincere,
• Of every friendless name the friend.
•  
• Yet still he fills affections eye,
• Obscurely wise and coarsely kind;
• Nor, letter'd Arrogance deny
• The praise to merit unrefined.
•  
• When fainting nature call'd for aid,
• And hov'ring death prepared the blow,
• His vig'rous remedy displayed
• The power of art without the show.
•  
• In misery's darkest cavern known,
• His useful care was ever nigh,
• Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
• And lonely want retired to die.
•  
• No summons mocked by chill delay,
• No petty gain disdained by pride,
• The modest wants of every day
• The toil of every day supplied.
•  
• His virtues walked their narrow round,
• Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
• And sure the Eternal Master found
• His single talent well employed.
•  
• The busy day, the peaceful night,
• Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
• His frame was firm, his powers were bright,
• Though now his eightieth year was nigh.
•  
• Then with no fiery throbbing pain,
• No cold gradations of decay,
• Death broke at once the vital chain
• And freed his soul the nearest way.

On a more personal note, when I was living in the slums of Oakland at twenty five with my friend Kim, in a free backyard shed of a house, with no employment, reading all day and living off the charity of friends, especially his girlfriend Norma who would visit twice a week and bring us meals. We walked the twenty blocks to the blood bank once a week for the ten dollars. On the third visit I passed out and was paid but told I couldn't come back. For the next six weeks we still walked there. Kim would go in, give blood and ask for two fives, handing me one as he stepped out the door. Now that's nobility, something rare in life, something you never forget.