It does not, indeed, always happen, that diligence is fortunate; the
wisest schemes are broken by unexpected accidents; the most constant
perseverance sometimes toils through life without a recompense; but
labour, though unsuccessful, is more eligible than idleness; he that
prosecutes a lawful purpose by lawful means, acts always with the
approbation of his own reason; he is animated through the course of his
endeavours by an expectation which, though not certain, he knows to be
just; and is at last comforted in his disappointment, by the
consciousness that he has not failed by his own fault.
That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of
gaining our own esteem; and what can any man infer in his own favour
from a condition to which, however prosperous, he contributed nothing,
and which the vilest and weakest of the species would have obtained by
the same right, had he happened to be the son of the same father?
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human
felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose
life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor
merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; and if
he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to
insensibility.
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