unquestionably proved their fitness for certain functions, in the
offices they could best fulfil,--then, to call the confused wreck of
social order and life brought about by malicious collision and
competition, an arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the most
insolent and wicked ways in which it is possible to take the name of
God in vain. But if, at the proper time, some earnest effort be made
to place youths, according to their capacities, in the occupations for
which they are fitted, I think the system of organization will be
finally found the best, which gives the least encouragement to
thoughts of any great future advance in social life.

7. The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to the strength
and happiness of men, does not consist in the anxiety of a struggle to
attain higher place, or rank, but in gradually perfecting the manner,
and accomplishing the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which
circumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the object of a
workman's ambition should not be to become a master; but to attain
daily more subtle and exemplary skill in his own craft, to save from
his wages enough to enrich and complete his home gradually with more
delicate and substantial comforts; and to lay by such store as shall
be sufficient for the happy maintenance of his old age (rendering him
independent of the help provided for the sick and indigent by the
arrangement pre-supposed), and sufficient also for the starting of his
children in a rank of life equal to his own. If his wages are not
enough to enable him to do this, they are unjustly low; if they are
once raised to this adequate standard, I do not think that by the
possible increase of his gains under contingencies of trade, or by
divisions of profits with his master, he should be enticed into
feverish hope of an entire change of condition; and as an almost
necessary consequence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with
immediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily life,
for which no subsequent success could indemnify him. And I am the more
confident in this belief, because, even supposing a gradual rise in
social rank possible for all well-conducted persons, my experience
does not lead me to think the elevation itself, when attained, would
be conducive to their happiness.

8. The grounds of this opinion I will give you in a future letter; in
the present one, I must pass to a more important point--namely