VI ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM 253 



Nobody suggests that there is anything wrong in 

 their being discontented with their station ; or 

 that, in their cases society suffers by men of 

 ability reaching the positions for which Nature 

 has fitted them. 



But there are better replies than those of the 

 tu quoquc sort to the caste agument. In the first 

 place, it is not true_that education, as such, unfits 

 men for rough and laborious, or even disgusting, 

 1 occupations. The life of a sailor is rougher and 

 harder than that of nine landsmen out of ten, and 

 yet, as every ship's captain knows, no sailor was 

 ever the worse for possessing a trained intelligence. 

 The life of a medical practitioner, especially in the 

 country, is harder and more laborious than that of 

 most artisans, and he is constantly obliged to do 

 things, which, in point of pleasantness, cannot be 

 ranked above scavengering yet he always ought 

 to be, and he frequently is, a highly educated 

 man. In the second place, though it may be 

 granted that the words of the catechism, which 

 require a man to do his duty in Hie station to 

 which it has pleased God to call him, give an ad- 

 mirable definition of our obligation to ourselves 

 and to society; yet the question remains, how is 

 any given person to find out what is the particular 

 station to which it has pleased God to call him ? 

 A new-born infant does not come into the world 

 labelled scavenger, shopkeeper, bishop or dukr. 

 One mass of red pulp is just like another to all 



