Dialogue Between Auguste Comte and the Labourer

All men are one another’s limbs, the leaves and stems of one big tree.

If man’s brain is the seat of intellect and if his feet trail on the ground, this is because they both are bound by Nature’s ineluctable decree.

One man commands, another works, both born to it. A Mahmud cannot do the work of an Ayaz.

Do you not see it is because work is divided between you that life becomes a garden, with both rose and thorn?

Philosopher, you cheat me when you say that I can never break my way out of this magic circle that you weave.

You pass base brass for gold, and teach me to resign myself to fate.

With my pickaxe I excavate long waterways, in which I hold the very ocean prisoner, and retrieve milk and honey from Nature’s stores.

Purveyor of strange subtleties, you give poor Kohkan’s prize, for all his sores, to the idle, rich and sly Parvez.

Do not try passing wrong for right with your philosophy. You cannot dupe a Khizr’s sight with a mirage’s trickery.

The capitalist is a burden on earth, with nothing to do but eat and sleep:

Which thrives because of those who work on it; do you not know this idler is a thief by birth?

The crime that he exists you want excused. With all your wisdom you have been bemused.