Adler's supreme rule is usually given as: act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby in thyself. Its interesting feature is the second clause, which rules out the philanthropic posture — you are not standing above the person you are helping, because the transaction changes you as well, and if it does not you have done it wrong. It is the movement's answer to the charge that ethics without God has no motive force: the motive is not obligation to a lawgiver but the specific alteration that comes from treating another person as irreplaceable. In practice it has been read as licensing long, unglamorous institutional work rather than dramatic charity, which is what the movement's record actually consists of.