him who was starving, or hang costly earrings on him who was naked, so love for mankind will not let us serve it by amusing the well-fed while we leave the cold and hungry to die of want.
True love, love not merely in words but in deeds, cannot be stupid—it is the one thing giving true perception and wisdom.
And, therefore, a man penetrated by love will not make a mistake, but will be sure to do first what love of man first requires: he will do what maintains the life of the hungry, the cold, and the heavy-laden, and that is all done by a direct struggle with Nature.
Only he who wishes to deceive himself and others, can, while men are in danger, struggling against want, stand aside from helping them, and, while he adds to their burden, assure himself and those who perish before his eyes, that he is occupied, or is devising means to save them.
No sincere man who sees that the purpose of his life is to serve others will say that. Or if he says it, he will find in his conscience no confirmation of his delusion, but will have to seek it in the insidious doctrine of the division of labour. In all expressions of true human wisdom, from Confucius to Mohammed, he will find one and the same truth (and will find it most forcibly in the Gospels)—a summons to serve man not according to the theory of the division of labour, but in the simplest, most natural, and only necessary way: he will find a demand to serve the sick, the prisoners, the hungry, and the naked. And help to the sick, the prisoners, the hungry, and the naked, can be rendered only by one's own immediate direct labour—for the sick, hungry, and naked do not wait, but die of hunger and cold.
His own life, which consists of service to others, will guide a man confessing the teaching of truth, to that primary law expressed at the commencement of Genesis, 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,' which Bóndaref calls 'first-born' and puts forward as a positive command.
