of clay, how they spin
themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes.
And fancy the most assiduous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced to
make dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking!
Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and
lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man
the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can
bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what
expensive colouring, what gilding and enamelling she will, he is but a
botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling,
squint-cornered, amorphous botch,--a mere enamelled vessel of
dishonour! Let the idle think of this.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other
blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will
follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble
force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an
ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows;--draining-off the sour
festering water, gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade;
making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with
its clear-flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the
stream and _its_ value be great or small! Labour is Life: from the
inmost heart of the Worker rises his god-given Force, the sacred
celestial Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from his
inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness,--to all knowledge,
'self-knowledge' and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins.
Knowledge? The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou
to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly
thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the
rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in
schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices,
till we try it and fix it. 'Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by
Action alone.'

* * * * *

And again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance, Openness
to light; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do better next time?
All these, all virtues, in wrestling with the dim brute Powers of
Fact, in ordering of thy fellows in such wrestle, there and elsewhere
not at all, thou wilt continually learn. Set down a brave Sir
Christopher in the middle of black ruine