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ESSAYS AND LETTERS

be because he loves such ways, and not because they are necessary to him—as at present.

Nor will it be necessary for the weak—those who, for some reason, are unable to earn their bread, or who have lost it in any way—to sell themselves, their labour, or sometimes even their souls, for bread.

There will not be the present general striving to free one's self from bread-labour and to put it on to others—a striving to crush the weak with overwork and to free the strong from all work.

There will not be that tendency which now directs the greatest efforts of men's minds, not towards lightening the labour of the workers, but towards lightening and embellishing the idleness of the idlers. The participation of all in bread-labour, and its recognition as first among human affairs, will accomplish what would be achieved by taking a cart, which stupid people were hauling along upside down, and turning it over on to its wheels. The cart would be saved from breaking, and would move easily.

And our life, with its contempt for, and rejection of, bread-labour, and our attempts at reforming that false life, are like a cart drawn along with its wheels in the air. All our reforms are useless till we turn the cart over and stand it right way up.

Such is Bóndaref's thought, with which I fully agree. The matter presents itself to me again as follows. There was a time when people ate one another. The consciousness of unity among men developed until that became impossible, and they ceased to eat each other. Then came a time when people seized the fruits of labour by violence from their fellows, and made slaves of men. But consciousness developed till that also became impossible. Violence, though still practised in hidden ways, has been destroyed in its grosser forms: men no longer openly seize the fruits of one another's labour. In our day the form of violence practised is, that some people take advantage of the needs of others to exploit them. In Bóndaref's opinion the time is near when there will be such a