them. Suffer, die, or recover;
but above all things live, live up to your last hour." It is
foresight, constantly carrying us out of ourselves, that is the true
source of our miseries.[293] O man, confine thy existence within
thyself, and thou wilt cease to be miserable. Thy liberty, thy power,
reach exactly as far as thy natural forces, and no further; all the
rest is slavery and illusion. The only man who has his own will is he
who does not need in order to have it the arms of another person at
the end of his own.[294]

The training that follows from this is obvious. The instructor has
carefully to distinguish true or natural need from the need which is
only fancied, or which only comes from superabundance of life.
Emilius, who is brought up in the country, has nothing in his room to
distinguish it from that of a peasant.[295] If he is taken to a
luxurious banquet, he is bidden, instead of heedlessly enjoying it, to
reflect austerely how many hundreds or thousands of hands have been
employed in preparing it.[296] His preference for gay colours in his
clothes is to be consulted, because this is natural and becoming to
his age, but the moment he prefers a stuff merely because it is rich,
behold a sophisticated creature.[297] The curse of the world is
inequality, and inequality springs from the multitude of wants, which
cause us to be so much the more dependent. What makes man essentially
good is to have few wants, and to abstain from comparing himself with
others; what makes him essentially bad, is to have many wants, and to
cling much to opinion.[298] Hence, although Emilius happened to have
both wealth and good birth, he is not brought up to be a gentleman,
with the prejudices and helplessness and selfishness too naturally
associated with that abused name.

This cardinal doctrine of limitation of desire, with its corollary of
self-sufficience, contains in itself the great maxim that Emilius and
every one else must learn some trade. To work is an indispensable duty
in the social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen
is a knave. And every boy must learn a real trade, a trade with his
hands. It is not so much a matter of learning a craft for the sake of
knowing one, as for the sake of conquering the prejudices which
despise it. Labour for glory, if you have not to labour from
necessity. Lower yourself to the condition of the artisan, so as to be
above your own. In order to reign in opinion, begin by r