ng as he does his best."

"You said so," I answered, "but I supposed the rule applied only to
the workers of different ability. Does it also hold of those who can
do nothing at all?"

"Are they not also men?"

"I am to understand, then, that the lame, the blind, the sick, and the
impotent, are as well off as the most efficient, and have the same
income?"

"Certainly," was the reply.

"The idea of charity on such a scale," I answered, "would have made
our most enthusiastic philanthropists gasp."

"If you had a sick brother at home," replied Dr. Leete, "unable to
work, would you feed him on less dainty food, and lodge and clothe him
more poorly, than yourself? More likely far, you would give him the
preference; nor would you think of calling it charity. Would not the
word, in that connection, fill you with indignation?"

"Of course," I replied; "but the cases are not parallel. There is a
sense, no doubt, in which all men are brothers; but this general sort
of brotherhood is not to be compared, except for rhetorical purposes,
to the brotherhood of blood, either as to its sentiment or its
obligations."

"There speaks the nineteenth century!" exclaimed Dr. Leete. "Ah, Mr.
West, there is no doubt as to the length of time that you slept. If I
were to give you, in one sentence, a key to what may seem the
mysteries of our civilization as compared with that of your age, I
should say that it is the fact that the solidarity of the race and the
brotherhood of man, which to you were but fine phrases, are, to our
thinking and feeling, ties as real and as vital as physical
fraternity.

"But even setting that consideration aside, I do not see why it so
surprises you that those who cannot work are conceded the full right
to live on the produce of those who can. Even in your day, the duty of
military service for the protection of the nation, to which our
industrial service corresponds, while obligatory on those able to
discharge it, did not operate to deprive of the privileges of
citizenship those who were unable. They stayed at home, and were
protected by those who fought, and nobody questioned their right to
be, or thought less of them. So, now, the requirement of industrial
service from those able to render it does not operate to deprive of
the privileges of citizenship, which now implies the citizen's
maintenance, him who cannot work. The worker is not a citizen because
he works, but works because he is a citizen. As you