may write, however well I may write, and however logically exact I may be, I shall not convince my reader, so long as his intellect is pitted against mine and his heart remains cold.
And that is why I ask you, reader, to check for awhile the activity of your intellect, and not to argue nor to demonstrate, hut to ask only your heart. Whoever you may be, however gifted, however kind to those about you, however circumstanced, can you sit unmoved over your tea, your dinner, your political, artistic, scientific, medical, or educational affairs, while you hear or see at your door a hungry, cold, sick, suffering man? No. Yet they are always there, if not at the door, then ten yards or ten miles away. They are there, and you know it.
And you cannot be at peace—cannot have pleasure which is not poisoned by this knowledge. Not to see them at your door you have to fence them off, or keep them away by your coldness, or go somewhere where they are not. But they are everywhere.
And if a place be found where you cannot see them, still, you can nowhere escape from the truth. What, then, must be done?
You know these things, and the teaching of truth tells you them.
Go to the bottom—to what seems to you the bottom, but is really the top—take your place beside those who produce food for the hungry and clothes for the naked, and do not be afraid: it will not be worse, but better in all respects. Take your place in the ranks, set to work with your weak, unskilled hands at that primary work which feeds the hungry and clothes the naked: at bread-labour, the struggle with Nature; and you will feel, for the first time, firm ground beneath your feet, will feel that you are at home, that you are free and stand firmly, and have reached the end of your journey. And you will feel those complete, unpoisoned joys which can be found nowhere else—not secured by any doors nor screened by any curtains.
You will know joys you have never known before;
