Sometimes, it is true, one may choose a life of leisure designedly, not with an idea of dissipation, but, on the contrary, with that of being free to do great things. Certain independent minds believe that a profession deprives a person of his liberty, narrows him, fastens him down to mean and monotonous occupations, subjects him to conventional and narrow modes of thinking--in short, that a positive kind of work weakens and lowers the mind. There is some truth in these remarks. Everybody has observed how men of different professions differ in their mode of thinking. What more different than a physician, a man of letters, a soldier, a merchant? All these men thought about the same in their youth; they see each other twenty years later; each has undergone a peculiar bent; each has his particular physiognomy, costume, etc. Not only has the profession absorbed the man, but it has also deadened his individuality. One may conceive, then, how some ambitious minds may expect to escape the yoke and preserve their liberty in renouncing all professions. To be subject to no fixed and prescribed occupation, to depend upon no master, to nobly cultivate the mind in every direction, to make vast experiments, to be a stranger to nothing, bound to nothing, is not that, seemingly, the height of human happiness? Some men of genius have followed this system, and found no bad results from it. Descartes relates to us in his _Discours sur la Méthode_ (Part I.), that, during nine years of his life, he did nothing but "roll about the world, hither and thither, trying to be a spectator, rather than an actor, in the comedies played therein." He tells us further, that he employed his "youth in traveling, in visiting courts and armies, in associating with people of various humors and conditions, in gathering divers experiences, in testing himself in the encounters chance favored him with, etc." That this may be an admirable school, a marvelously instructive arena for well-endowed minds, no one will doubt; but what is possible and useful to a Descartes or a Pascal, will it suit the majority of men? Is it not to be feared that this wandering in every direction, this habit of having nowhere a foot-hold, may make the mind superficial and weaken its energy? He who renounces being an actor, to be only a spectator, as did Descartes, takes too easy a part; he frees himself from all responsibility: this may sharpen the mind, but there will always remain some radical deficiency. Force of character, however, and personal superiority may set at naught all these conclusions--sound as they in general are in theory.[64]