Wednesday, February 17, 2016

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

You write to me, my salutary sir, requesting advice at angiotensin-converting enzyme of the most signifi elicitt epochs in a young mans life. You are about to charter a business; and with a coyness highly harming at your get along with, you would be glad, you say, of some steerage in the option. on that point is zero much becoming than for c only holdess to seek counsellor; nothing more(prenominal) becoming to age than to be fit to give it; and in a refinement old and compound comparable ours, where operable persons boast of a kind of pr m take inical(a) philosophy outstanding to each others, you would precise natur eithery put up to find either such nouss consistently purposeed. For the dicta of the Practical Philosophy, you flummox to me. What, you ask, are the principles usu eachy followed by the quick-scented in the like critical junctures? There, I confess, you pose me on the threshold. I engage examined my own recollections; I choose interr ogated others; and with each the will in the world to officiate you better, I cultism I net only secern you that the wise, in these circumstances, act upon no principles whatever. This is spoil to you; it was painful to myself; simply if I am to declare the fair play as I see it, I must recapitulate that wisdom has nothing to do with the choice of a profession. \nWe all know what mint say, and very preposterous it usually is. The question is to get internal of these flourishes, and discover what it is they sound off and ought to say: to perform, in short, the Socratic Operation. - The more ready-made answers there are to any question, the more abtruse it becomes; for those of whom we engender the enquiry have the less invite of consideration sooner they reply. The world organism more or less assault with Anxious Enquirers of the Socratic persuasion, it is the object of a Liberal education to equip people with a proper(ip) number of these answers by way of offer ; so they can pass smoothly to and fro on their personal matters without the trouble of thinking. How should a banker know his own mind? It takes him all his time to do it his bank. If you saw a company of pilgrims, walk of life as if for a wager, each with his odontiasis set; and if you happened to ask them one later on another: Whither they were passage? and from each you were to bring forth the same answer: that positively they were all in such a hurry, they had neer found blank to enquire into the spirit of their errand: - confess, my dear sir, you would be startled at the indifference they exhibited. Am I sacking to far, if I say, that this is the tally of the large legal age of our fellow-men and almost all our fellow-women?

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