cost. He whose thoughts and activities are all needed for, and
habitually employed in, practicable and useful enterprises, is the
person of all others least likely to let his mind dwell with brooding
discontent upon things either not worth attaining, or which are not so
to him. Thus the active, self-helping character is not only
intrinsically the best, but is the likeliest to acquire all that is
really excellent or desirable in the opposite type.

The striving, go-ahead character of England and the United States is
only a fit subject of disapproving criticism on account of the very
secondary objects on which it commonly expends its strength. In itself
it is the foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement of
mankind. It has been acutely remarked that whenever any thing goes
amiss, the habitual impulse of French people is to say, "Il faut de la
patience;" and of English people, "What a shame!" The people who think
it a shame when any thing goes wrong--who rush to the conclusion that
the evil could and ought to have been prevented, are those who, in the
long run, do most to make the world better. If the desires are low
placed, if they extend to little beyond physical comfort, and the show
of riches, the immediate results of the energy will not be much more
than the continual extension of man's power over material objects; but
even this makes room, and prepares the mechanical appliances for the
greatest intellectual and social achievements; and while the energy is
there, some persons will apply it, and it will be applied more and
more, to the perfecting, not of outward circumstances alone, but of
man's inward nature. Inactivity, unaspiringness, absence of desire,
are a more fatal hindrance to improvement than any misdirection of
energy, and is that through which alone, when existing in the mass,
any very formidable misdirection by an energetic few becomes possible.
It is this, mainly, which retains in a savage or semi-savage state the