est sorts of
Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real
harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire,
Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like
helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor dayworker, as of
every man: but he bends himself with free valour against his
task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far
off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow
of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all
poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made
bright blessed flame!

Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A
formless Chaos, once set it _revolving,_ grows round and ever
rounder; ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata,
spherical courses; is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted
World. What would become of the Earth, did she cease to revolve?
In the poor old Earth, so long as she revolves, all inequalities,
irregularities disperse themselves; all irregularities are
incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on the Potter's
wheel,--one of the venerablest objects; old as the Prophet
Ezechiel and far older? Rude lumps 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