o be providing
against an unlikely contingency, and indeed an ugly and commercial
business. He did not think it probable that he would lose interest in
his work, and he thought it better to devote himself to it while it
interested him. If the time ever came when he needed a new set of
relationships, he thought he could trust himself to form them; and if
he did not desire to form them, well, to be bored was bad enough, but
it was better on the whole to be passively rather than to be actively
bored.

But Hugh's theory in reality went deeper than that. He had a strong
belief, which grew in intensity with age, that the only chance of
realising one's true life was to do something that interested one with
all one's might. He did not believe that what was done purely from a
sense of duty, unless it pleased and satisfied some part of one's
nature, was ever effective or even useful. It was not well done, and
it was neglected on any excuse. His pilgrimage through the world
presented itself to Hugh in the light of a journey through hilly
country. The ridge that rose in front of one concealed a definite type
of scenery; that scenery was there; there were indeed a hundred
possibilities about it, and the imagination might amuse itself by
forecasting what it was to be like. But it seemed to Hugh that one
wasted time in these forecasts; and that it was better to wait and see
what it actually was, and then to enjoy it as vigorously as one could.
To spend one's time in fantastic speculation as to what was coming, was
to waste vigour and thought, which were better employed in observing
and interpreting what was around one.

And so Hugh resolved that his relations with others should be of this
kind; that he would not seek restlessly for particular kinds of
friendships; but that he would accept the circle that he found, the
persons with whom relations were inevitable; and that he would make the
most of what he found. Choice and selection! How little one really
employed them! the world streamed past one, an unsuspected,
unlooked-for friend would suddenly emerge from the throng, and one
would find oneself journeying shoulder to shoulder for a space. Hugh
thought indeed sometimes that one made no friendships at all of
oneself; but that God sent the influences of which one had need, at the
very time at which one needed them, and then silently and tenderly
withdrew them again for a time, when they had done their work for the
soul.