come of the
Earth did she cease to revolve? In the poor old Earth, so long as she
revolves, all inequalities, irregularities, disperse themselves; all
irregularities are incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on
the Potter's wheel,--one of the venerablest objects; old as the
Prophet Ezekiel and far older? Rude lumps of clay, how they spin
themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes.
And fancy the most assiduous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced to
make dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking!
Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and
lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man
the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can
bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what
expensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a
botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling,
squint-cornered, amorphous botch,--a mere enameled vessel of dishonor!
Let the idle think of this.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other
blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will
follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force
through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening
river there, it runs and flows;--draining off the sour festering water
gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead
of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing
stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and _its_
value be great or small! Labor is Life: from the inmost heart of the
Worker rises his God-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence
breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him
to all nobleness,--to all knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much else,
so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge? The knowledge that will hold
good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits
that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what
thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of
knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the
clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try it and fix it. "Doubt,
of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone."

III

CROMWELL[49]

Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who
c