sight to be room for doubt. I am not referring to the religious
feeling which has so generally existed in favour of the inactive
character, as being more in harmony with the submission due to the
divine will. Christianity as well as other religions has fostered this
sentiment; but it is the prerogative of Christianity, as regards
this and many other perversions, that it is able to throw them off.
Abstractedly from religious considerations, a passive character, which
yields to obstacles instead of striving to overcome them, may not
indeed be very useful to others, no more than to itself, but it
might be expected to be at least inoffensive. Contentment is always
counted among the moral virtues. But it is a complete error to suppose
that contentment is necessarily or naturally attendant on passivity of
character; and useless it is, the moral consequences are
mischievous. Where there exists a desire for advantages not possessed,
the mind which does not potentially possess them by means of its own
energies is apt to look with hatred and malice on those who do. The
person bestirring himself with hopeful prospects to improve his
circumstances is the one who feels good-will towards others engaged
in, or who have succeeded in, the same pursuit. And where the majority
are so engaged, those who do not attain the object have had the tone
given to their feelings by the general habit of the country, and
ascribe their failure to want of effort or opportunity, or to their
personal ill luck. But those who, while desiring what others
possess, put no energy into striving for it, are either incessantly
grumbling that fortune does not do for them what they do not attempt
to do for themselves, or overflowing with envy and ill-will towards
those who possess what they would like to have.

  In proportion as success in life is seen or believed to be the fruit
of fatality or accident, and not of exertion, in that same ratio
does envy develop itself as a point of national character. The most
envious of all mankind are the Orientals. In Oriental moralists, in
Oriental tales, the envious man is remarkably prominent. In real life,
he is the terror of all who possess anything desirable, be it a
palace, a handsome child, or even good health and spirits: the
supposed effect of his mere look constitutes the all-pervading
superstition of the evil eye. Next to Orientals in envy, as in
activity, are some of the Southern Europeans. The Spaniards pursued
all their great men with it, embittered their lives, and generally
succeeded in putting an early stop to their successes.* With the
French, who are essentially a southern people, the double education of
despotism and Catholicism has, in spite of their impulsive
temperament, made submission and endurance the common character of the
people, and their most received notion of wisdom and excellence: and
if envy of one another, and of all superiority, is not more rife among
them than it is, the circumstance must be ascribed to the many
valuable counteracting elements in the French character, and most of
all to the great individual energy which, though less persistent and
more intermittent than in the self-helping and struggling
Anglo-Saxons, has nevertheless manifested itself among the French in
nearly every direction in which the operation of their institutions
has been favourable to it.

  * I limit the expression to past time, because I would say nothing
derogatory of a great, and now at last a free, people, who are
entering into the general movement of European progress with a
vigour which bids fair to make up rapidly the ground they have lost.
No one can doubt what Spanish intellect and energy are capable of; and
their faults as a people are chiefly those for which freedom and
industrial ardour are a real specific.

  There are, no doubt, in all countries, really contented
characters, who not merely do not seek, but do not desire, what they
do not already possess, and these naturally bear no ill-will towards
such as have apparently a more favoured lot. But the great mass of
seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or
self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising
itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level. And if we
look narrowly even at the cases of innocent contentment, we perceive
that they only win our admiration when the indifference is solely to
improvement in outward circumstances, and there is a striving for
perpetual advancement in spiritual worth, or at least a
disinterested zeal to benefit others. The contented man, or the
contented family, who have no ambition to make any one else happier,
to promote the good of their country or their neighbourhood, or to
improve themselves in moral excellence, excite in us neither
admiration nor approval. We rightly ascribe this sort of contentment
to mere unmanliness and want of spirit. The content which we approve
is an ability to do cheerfully without what cannot be had, a just
appreciation of the comparative value of different objects of
desire, and a willing renunciation of the less when incompatible
with the greater. These, however, are excellences more natural to
the character, in proportion as it is actively engaged in the
attempt to improve its own or some other lot. He who is continually
measuring his energy against difficulties learns what are the
difficulties insuperable to him, and what are those which, though he
might overcome, the success is not worth the cost. He whose thoughts
and activities are all needed for, and habitually employed in,
practicable and useful enterprises, is the person of all others
least likely to let his mind dwell with brooding discontent upon
things either not worth attaining, or which are not so to him. Thus
the active, self-helping character is not only intrinsically the best,
but is the likeliest to acquire all that is really excellent or
desirable in the opposite type.

  The striving, go-ahead character of England and the United States is
only a fit subject of disapproving criticism on account of the very
secondary objects on which it commonly expends its strength. In itself
it is the foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement
of mankind. It has been acutely remarked that whenever anything goes