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 will be better off for doing so; follow the wise man’s advice.” Nevertheless, a great many do not hear and will not believe, and matters go on very much as they did before.

All this is natural, and will continue as long as people do not believe the wise man’s words. But, we are told, a time will come when every one on the farm will listen to and understand the words of the wise man, and will realize that God spoke through his lips, and that the wise man was himself none other than God in person; and all will have faith in his words. Meanwhile, instead of living according to the advice of the wise man, each struggles for his own, and they slay each other without pity, saying, “The struggle for existence is inevitable; we cannot do otherwise.”

What does it all mean? Even the beasts graze in the fields without interfering with each other’s needs, and men, after having learned the conditions of the true life, and after being convinced that God himself has shown them how to live the true life, follow still their evil ways, saying that it is impossible to live otherwise. What should we think of the people at the farm if, after having heard the words of the wise man, they had continued to live as before, snatching the bread from each other’s mouths, fighting, and trying to grasp everything, to their own loss? We should say that they had misunderstood the wise man’s words, and imagined things to be different from what they really were. The wise man said to them, “Your life here is bad; amend your