I always wonder at the often repeated words, “Yes, it is all true in theory, but how is it in practice?” As though the theory were only a collection of words useful for conversation, and not as though all practice,—that is, all activity of life—were inevitably based upon it.

There must have been an immense number of foolish theories in the world for men to employ such wonderful reasoning. We know that theory is what a man thinks about a thing, and practice is what he does. How can a man think that he ought to act in one way, and then do quite the reverse? If the theory of baking bread consists in this, that first of all one must knead the dough, then put it by to rise, anyone knowing it would be a fool to do the reverse. But with us it has come into fashion to say, “It is all very well in theory, but how would it be in practice?”

In all that has occupied me practice has unavoidably
followed theory, not mainly in order to justify it, but because it could not help doing so: if I have understood the affair upon which I have meditated I cannot help doing it in the way in which I have understood it.

I wished to help the needy only because I had money to spare: and I shared the general superstition that money represents labour, and, generally speaking, is something lawful and good in itself. But, having begun to give this money away, I saw that I was only drawing bills of exchange collected from poor people; that I was doing the very thing the old landlords used to do in compelling some of their serfs to work for other serfs.

I saw that every use of money, whether buying anything with it, or giving it away gratis, is a drawing of bills of exchange on poor people, or passing them to others to be drawn by them. And therefore I clearly understood the foolishness of what I was doing in helping the poor by exacting money from them.

I saw that money in itself was not only not a good thing, but obviously an evil one, depriving men of their chief good, labour, and that this very good I cannot give to anyone because I am myself deprived of it: I have neither labour nor the happiness of utilizing my labour.

It might be asked by some, “What is there so peculiarly important in abstractly discussing the meaning of money?” But this argument which I have opened is not merely for the sake of discussion, but in order to find an answer to the vital question which had caused me so much suffering, and on which my life depended, in order to discover what I was to do.

As soon as I understood what wealth means, what money means, then it became clear and certain what I have to do, it became clear and certain what all others have to do,—and that they will inevitably do it, what all men must do. In reality I merely came to realize what I have long known,—that truth which has been transmitted to men from the oldest times, by Buddha, by Isaiah, by Laotse, by Socrates, and most clearly and definitely by Jesus and his predecessor John the Baptist.

John the Baptist, in answer to men's question “What shall we do then?” answered plainly and briefly, “He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise” (Luke iii., 10, 11).

The same thing, and with still greater clearness, said Jesus,—blessing the poor, and uttering woes on the rich. He said that no man can serve God and mammon. He forbade his disciples not only to take money, but also
to have two coats. He said to the rich young man that he could not enter into the kingdom of God because he was rich, and that it is easier for a camel to go through the needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

He said that he who would not leave every thing—his houses and children and his fields—in order to follow him, was not his disciple. He spoke a parable about a rich man who had done nothing wrong (like our own rich people), but merely dressed well and ate and drank well, yet by this lost his own soul; and about a beggar named Lazarus, who had done nothing good, but who had saved his soul by his beggar's life.

This truth had long been known to me; but the false teaching of the world had so cunningly hidden it that it became a theory in the sense which men like to attach to this word,—that is, a pure abstraction. But as soon as I succeeded in pulling down in my consciousness the sophistry of the world's teaching, then theory became one with practice and the reality of my life and the life of all men became its unavoidable result.

I came to understand that man, besides living for his own good, must work for the good of others; and that if we were to dr............