little circle, perhaps of misery.  From the very moment of consciousness, the active Principle begins to busy itself with the things about it:  it shows itself in the infant, stretching its little hands towards the candle; in the schoolboy, filling up, if alone, his play-hour with the mimic toils of after age; and so on, through every stage and condition of life; from the wealthy spend-thrift, beggaring himself at the gaming-table for employment, to the poor prisoner in the Bastile, who, for the want of something to occupy his thoughts, overcame the antipathy of his nature, and found his companion in a spider.  Nay, were there need, we might draw out the catalogue till it darkened with suicide.  But enough has been said to show, that, aside from guilt, a more terrible fiend has hardly been imagined than the little word Nothing, when embodied and realized as the master of the mind.  And well for the world that it is so; since to this wise law of our nature, to say nothing of conveniences, we owe the endless sources of innocent enjoyment with which the industry and ingenuity of man have supplied us.

But the wisdom of the law in question is not merely that it is a preventive to the mind preying on itself; we see in it a higher purpose,—­no less than what involves the developement of the human being; and, if we look to its final bearing, it is of the deepest import.  It might seem at first a paradox, that, the natural condition of the mind being averse to inactivity, it should still have so strong a desire for rest; but a little reflection will show that this involves no real contradiction.  The mind only mistakes the name of its object, neither rest nor action being its real aim; for in a state of rest it desires action, and in a state of action, rest.  Now all action supposes a purpose, which purpose can consist of but one of two things; either the attainment of some immediate object as its completion, or the causing of one or more future acts, that shall follow as a consequence.  But whether the action terminates in an immediate object, or serves as the procreating cause of an indefinite series of acts, it must have some ultimate object in which it ends,—­or is to end.  Even supposing such a series of acts to be continued through a whole life, and yet remain incomplete, it would not alter the case.  It is well known that many such series have employed the minds of mathematicians and astronomers to their last hour; nay, that those acts have been taken up by others, and continued through successive generations:  still, whether the point be arrived at or no, there must have been an end in contemplation.  Now no one can believe that, in similar cases, any man would voluntarily devote all his days to the adding link after link to an endless chain, for the mere pleasure of labor.  It is true he may be aware of the wholesomeness of such labor as one of the means of cheerfulness; but, if he have no further aim, his being aware of this result makes an equable flow of spirits a positive