THE GOLDEN RULEcapital becomes necessary. Men come into more intimate
relations with one another. Instead of each one doing every-
thing, men generally begin to devote themselves to special
employments, and to depend upon others to provide many
things for them while they engage in some special occupa-
tion. In this way labor becomes diversified. One person works
in iron, another in wood; one manufactures cloth, another
makes it into garments; some raise food to feed those who
build houses and manufacture implements of husbandry.
This necessitates a system of exchanges, and to facilitate
exchanges roads must be made, and men must be employed
to make them. As population increases and necessities mul-
tiply, the business of exchange becomes enlarged, until we
have immense manufactories, railroads girding the earth with
iron bands, steamships plowing every sea, and a multitude
of men who cannot raise bread or make a garment, or do
anything directly for the supply of their own wants.
Now, we can see how we become more dependent upon
others as our wants are multiplied and civilization advances.
Each one works in his special employment, does better work,
because he can devote his whole thought and time to a form of
use for which he is specially fitted, and contributes more largely
to the public good. While he is working for others, all others are
working for him. Every member of the community is working
for the whole body, and the whole body for every member. This
is the law of perfect life, a law which rules everywhere in the
material body. Every man who is engaged in any employment
useful to body or mind is a philanthropist, a public benefactor,
whether he raises corn on the prairie, cotton in Texas or India,
mines coal in the chambers of the earth, or feeds it to engines
in the hold of a steamship. If selfishness did not pervert and
blast human motives, all men and women would be fulfilling
the law of charity while engaged in their daily employment.
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