say in favor of such a plan. In this it seems clear that ordinary
public opinion is in the right, not because people choose wisely, but
because any choice of their own is better than a forced marriage.
What applies to marriage ought also to apply to the choice of a trade
or profession; although some men have no marked preferences, most men
greatly prefer some occupations to others, and are far more likely to
be useful citizens if they follow their preferences than if they are
thwarted by a public authority.

The case of the man who has an intense conviction that he ought to do
a certain kind of work is peculiar, and perhaps not very common; but
it is important because it includes some very important individuals.
Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale defied convention in obedience to
a feeling of this sort; reformers and agitators in unpopular causes,
such as Mazzini, have belonged to this class; so have many men of
science. In cases of this kind the individual conviction deserves the
greatest respect, even if there seems no obvious justification for it.
Obedience to the impulse is very unlikely to do much harm, and may
well do great good. The practical difficulty is to distinguish such
impulses from desires which produce similar manifestations. Many
young people wish to be authors without having an impulse to write any
particular book, or wish to be painters without having an impulse to
create any particular picture. But a little experience will usually
show the difference between a genuine and a spurious impulse; and
there is less harm in indulging the spurious impulse for a time than
in thwarting the impulse which is genuine. Nevertheless, the plain
man almost always has a tendency to thwart the genuine impulse,
because it seems anarchic and unreasonable, and is seldom able to give
a good account of itself in advance.