eve the fact of their
being unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of some
kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may
be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit
for it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of
success in it--not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of
other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather
knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done,
whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a
man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of
his work, but a good judge of his work.

The first thing then that he has to do, if unhappily his parents or
masters have not done it for him, is to find out what he is fit for. In
which inquiry a man may be very safely guided by his likings, if he be
not also guided by his pride. People usually reason in some such
fashion as this: "I don't seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm
of ---- & Co., therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor
of the Exchequer." Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus: "I don't
seem quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of ---- & Co., but I
daresay I might do something in a small green-grocery business; I used
to be a good judge of peas;" that is to say, always trying lower instead
of trying higher, until they find bottom: once well set on the ground, a
man may build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one in
his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind of humility is
rendered especially difficult in these days, by the contumely thrown on
men in humble employments. The very removal of the massy bars which once
separated one class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold
more shameful in foolish people's, i. e. in most people's eyes, to
remain in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. When a man
born of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely different species of
animal from a man born of a noble, it made him no more uncomfortable or
ashamed to remain that different species of animal, than it makes a
horse ashamed to remain a horse, and not to become a giraffe. But now
that a man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate himself,
unreproached, with people once far above him, not only is the natural
discontentedness of humanity developed to an unheard-of extent, whatever