fronted with the
necessity of earning their living, and then their choice had to be made
in a hurry; they pushed the nearest door open and went in; and then
habit began to forge chains about them; and soon, however uncongenial
their life might be, they were incapable of abandoning it. There were
some melancholy instances at Cambridge of men of high intellectual
power, who had drifted thus into the academical life without any
aptitude for it, without educational zeal, without interest in young
people. Such men went on tamely year after year, passing from one
college office to another, inadequately paid, with no belief in the
value of their work, averse to trying experiments, fond of comfort,
only anxious to have as little trouble as possible, expending their
ingenuity of mind in academical meetings, criticising the verbal
expression of reports with extreme subtlety, too fastidious to design
original work, too much occupied for patient research, and ending
either in a bitter sense of unrecognised merit, or in a frank and
unashamed indolence.

Hugh saw that in choosing the work of one's life, one must not be
guided by necessity, or even mere rectitude. Work embraced from a
sense of duty was like driving a chariot in sea-sand. One must have an
enthusiasm for one's task, and a delight in it; for only by enjoyment
of the results could one tolerate the mechanical labour inseparable
from all intellectual toil. It was true that he had himself drifted
into official duties, but here Hugh saw the guidance of a very tender
providence, which had provided him with a species of discipline that he
could never have spontaneously practised. His great need had been the
application of some hardening and hammering process, such as should
give him that sort of concentrated alertness which his education had
failed to bestow; and none the less tenderly provided, it seemed to
Hugh, was the irresistible impulse to arise and go, which had come upon
him when the process was completed. And now he was free, with an
immense appetite for speculation, for intellectual pleasure, for the
criticism of life, for observation. It was the quality, the fine
essence of things and thoughts that mattered. To some was given the
desire to organise and manage the world, to others the instinct for
perception, for analysis, for the development of ideas. It was not
that one kind of work was better than the other; both were needed, both
were noble; but Hugh ha