Seeing that our attention was attracted to this new movement started by Polaris, MacNair said:
"That is our hospital or relief ship. Polaris has called them to the assistance of your sick sailors."
"Thank God!" ejaculated Captain Ganoe, "for indeed the poor fellows need the most careful attention. She and her comrades have placed us under obligations for their kindness, that can never be repaid. I am indeed most thankful to our new found friends."
"Why feel under such obligations to anyone?" asked Iola. "Polaris is only doing her duty and so are her comrades. This is a duty which we owe to each other, and you and your sailors will only receive that which justly belongs to you."
"But are we not under obligations to those who assist us when in trouble?" asked Captain Ganoe, "and should we not repay them for the burdens we impose on them?"
"I do not quite understand you," said Iola. "You certainly are under obligations to yourself to entertain feelings of grateful appreciation toward those who assist you in getting out of a difficult and distressing situation, as this feeling tends to make us all better men and women, and hence more desirable members of the community. But as to repaying others for their assistance, I cannot see how we could do so unless we were to place them under similar environments, and we certainly would not do that, simply for the purpose of securing an opportunity to do for them what they did for us."
"And I do not understand you at all," said the Captain. "When people help us, we are certainly under obligations to compensate them for their assistance, with something more substantial than mere thanks."
"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."