?«
    »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
recognize the duty of the strong to fight for the weak, we, now that fighting is
gone by, recognize his duty to work for him.
    A solution which leaves an unaccounted-for residuum is no solution at all;
and our solution of the problem of human society would have been none at all had
it left the lame, the sick, and the blind outside with the beasts, to fare as
they might. Better far have left the strong and well unprovided for than these
burdened ones, toward whom every heart must yearn, and for whom ease of mind and
body should be provided, if for no others. Therefore it is, as I told you this
morning, that the title of every man, woman, and child to the means of existence
rests on no basis less