"Then I will try to make my meaning clear," she said. "We all seek happiness, but a well ordered mind cannot enjoy real happiness while others are miserable. So in helping others into a condition where they may be happy, we are working to establish and perpetuate conditions that are essential to our own happiness. The act itself brings its own reward. In order for a people to be happy, it is necessary for them to do to others as they would have others do to them. This is one of the most simple and obvious laws that govern our relations to each other. It cannot be ignored without establishing conditions, under the operations of which, misery would become the normal condition of mankind, ourselves included." "I begin to get a glimpse of your meaning," replied the Captain. "The founder of our religion, inculcated the same principles in his teachings which we call the 'Golden Rule,' but I have never before met with such a practical, matter-of-fact application of it to all the relations existing between the individual members of the human family. It may be that among our people a few small circles, to some extent, apply this rule of action to a chosen few, but it is never applied to the people in general, except by some cranky individual, who in popular esteem, is regarded as a fit subject for a lunatic asylum." "It seems strange to us," said Iola, "that your people do not universally apply this fundamental law, upon which human happiness depends, in all their relations with each other. They must certainly desire happiness and the most ordinary intelligence ought to incline them to use the means by which they could secure happiness. But I know from history that this law was entirely ignored by our ancestors thousands of years ago. It was first taught as a religious tenet, but for ages it has been accepted as a fundamental principle in our civilization, and as a teacher of moral philosophy in our schools it becomes my duty to inculcate these principles into the minds of the children. The civilization which we have now, carries out in practice, the fundamental, humanitarian principles to which the founders of our old religious system gave expression. These teachings were in many respects identical, even in language, with the teachings of Jesus and the apostles as I find them recorded, in the copy of the New Testament which was among the books that my husband, then a small boy, saved from his father's ship which went to the bottom near the barren island where he was discovered." "This is indeed remarkable," said the Captain. "I had thought from the tenor of your remarks that the apostles must have penetrated this inner world and taught these doctrines, and that they had taken a better hold on the minds of the people than they have in the outer world. I see, however, that you claim an independent origin for your religious system, yet you have the same fundamental doctrines. How is this?"