Let even a polished man of these days
get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent
on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable
results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk
the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find
himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who
may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in
some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the
responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor
himself on the chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not
to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's
confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called
Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know;
let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a
profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will
infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe
in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated
in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings
forth a crop after its kind.
CHAPTER TEN
JUSTICE MALAM was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man of
capacious mind, seeing that he could draw much wider conclusions
without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were not
on the Commission of the Peace.
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