TIMOTHY b6NDAREF 21]
and be forgotten ; but what Bondaref has said, and that to which he has called men, will not be forgotten — for life itself will bring men more and more to see the force of his statements.
All discoveries of truth, whether in science (abstract or applied), in philosophy, in morals, or in economics, are reached by people going round the new truths in ever-narrowing circles, drawing nearer and nearer to them, and sometimes slightly touching them, until some bold, free, and gifted man seizes the very centre of the new truth, and places it on a height where it is visible to all. This is just what Bondaref has done for the moral-economic truth which was awaiting discovery and elucidation in our time. Many have said, and are saying, the same thing. Some consider physical labour necessary for health ; others consider it essential for a just economic order ; a third group show its necessity for the normal, all-round development of man's capaci- ties ; while a fourth group considers it essential for man's moral progress. Thus, for instance, Ruskin — one of the greatest English writers, and one of the greatest authors of our age (almost as little esteemed as our own Bondaref by the cultured crowd of to-day) — notwithstanding the fact that he is a most highly educated and refined man {i.e., notwithstanding the fact that he stands at the opposite pole of society from Bondaref), in Letter 67 of his Fors Clavigera, says : — ' It is physically impossible that true religious knowledge, or pure morality, should exist among any classes of a nation who do not work with their hands for their bread. '
Many go round this truth and express it (as Ruskin does) with various reservations, but no one else has done what Bondaref does in acknowledging bread- labour to be the fundamental religious law of life. And he has not done this, as it pleases people to sup- pose, because he is an ignorant and foolish man who does not know all that we know ; but he has done it because he is a man of genius, who knows that truth is only then the truth, when it is expressed, not with
