Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/29

Rh actions belong to those only who break it. In his eyes, the principal of humanity's positive duties, the first and incontestable need of each individual, is to work with his hands for bread; he understands by it that each man, by long and painful labor, should preserve himself from dying of cold and hunger, and that he should procure by manual labor food, clothing, warmth, and shelter.

Bondareff's fundamental idea is that this law (man must work to live), now regarded as merely necessary, should be considered as the highest of all. It ought to be held as a religious duty, like observing the Sabbath and circumcision are among the Israelites, fasting and the sacraments among Christians, and the praying five times a day and other practices among the Mahometans.

He claims that if men regarded working for bread as a religious duty, no other occupation would deter them from fulfilling it, even as nothing can deter believers from celebrating the feasts prescribed by their religion.

We have more than eighty feast-days in the year, while working for bread only requires, according to Bondareff's calculation, about forty days.

How extraordinary it seems, at first glance, that a means so simple, so easy to be understood by all the world, and requiring neither skill nor science to accomplish it, should be able to save humanity from all terrestrial evils, no matter