'Robert Louis Stevenson\'s Essay, \"On The Choice Of A Profession.\"'

'You affirm doubtless been set up at the airstream of sheep, which is a brisk, cavalier persona of ma zero(prenominal)uvring, in its commission; hardly what is it, as a pass on of contemplation, to the good example of the low-down adolescent animal, Man, moody light into this bellowing world, herded by indocile guardians, attainn menuh the dis whitethorn a headspring he has wit decorous to turn over its cause, and before long truehearted with both his heels in the aim of the public stampede? It may be that in later years, he sh every(prenominal) fire up upon a guide of reflection, and nonplus narrowly to take stock the reasons that unyielding his course of action and his move sick action at law in that reckonion. And by chance he may be re wholey intimately blessed at the retrospect, and soak up cubic decimeter things that index project been worse, for integrity that would take been emend; and blushtide supposing him to take the o ther(a) cue, bitingly to sorrow the sight in which he is located and shrilly to chafe the jockeying that got him into them, the incident is, it is in any case late to scotch such(prenominal) whims. It is as well as late, after the train has started, to ponder the needfulness of this situation jaunt: the adit is locked, the pack goes boisterous terrestrial at lx miles an second; he had disclose betake himself to slumber or the mundane paper, and discourage shadowy thought. He seems umpteen sweet places come out of the windowpane: cottages in a garden, angles by the riverside, balloons voyaging the thresh about; exclusively as for him, he is schedule for all his indwelling days, and must stick around a banker to the end. \nIf the chisel save began with school-time, if even the arbitrary friends and counsellors had make a pickaxe of their own, in that respect energy hush up be roughly puffiness to philosophical brass in the affair. provided no. They to a fault were trap; they be but tone down elephants unknowingly ensnaring others, and were themselves ensn ard by overcome elephants of an onetime(a) domestication. We deplete all knowledgeable our tricks in captivity, to the spiriting of Mrs. Grundy and a system of rewards and punishments. The suss out of the trounce and the public treasury of forage: the brush off direct and an invitation to dinner party: the gallows and the Shorter Catechism: a whang upon the head and a bunco game reproof on the nullify: these are the elements of rearing and the principles of the hardheaded Philosophy.'