at physical elements such
or such a quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its
developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this
consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed,
meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch
as totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it
is of the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature
by which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily
effected.

Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of
nature?

A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from
it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor,
his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is
sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and
enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while
he occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires,
time does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments
his strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.

Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?

A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the
others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even
the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which
accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured
with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the
desires of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render
him intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and
contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his
fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies
of sickness and of poverty.

Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?

A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far
more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result,
or the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to
lead to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and
when a man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by
vicious means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All
the individual virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an
abun