It may, therefore, be doubtful whether a life of leisure, with some exceptions, be good for him who gives himself up to it; but what is not legitimate, is the kind of jealousy and envy which those who work often entertain against those who have nothing to do. There is a legitimate leisure and nobly employed. For example, a legitimate leisure is that which, obtained through hereditary fortune, is engaged in gratuitously serving the country, in study, in the management of property, the cultivation of land, in travels devoted to observation and the amelioration of human things, in a noble intercourse with society. It is a grievous error to wish to blot out of societies all existence that has not gain for its end, and is not connected with daily wants. Property and riches are true social functions, and among the most difficult of functions. Those who know how to use them with profit, fill one of the most useful parts in society, and cannot be said to be without a profession. =95. Of the choice of a profession.=--If it is necessary in society to have a profession, it is important that it be well chosen. He who is not in his right place, is wanting in some essential quality to fill the one he occupies: "If the abbé de Carignan had yielded to the wishes of Madame de Soissons, his mother, what glory would not the house of Savoy have been deprived of! The empire would have been deprived of one of its greatest captains, one of the bulwarks of Christianity. Prince Eugene was a very great man in the profession they wished to interdict him; what would he have been in the profession they wished him to embrace? M. de Retz insisted absolutely that his youngest son should be an ecclesiastic, despite the repugnance he manifested for this profession, despite the scandalous conduct he indulged in to escape from it. This duke [M. de Retz] gives to the church a sacrilegious priest, to Paris a sanguinary archbishop, to the kingdom a great rebel, and deprives his house of the last prop that could have sustained it."[65] One should, therefore, study his vocation, not decide too quickly, get information on the nature and duties of different professions; then consult his taste, but without allowing himself to be carried away by illusory, proud, inconsistent fancies; consult wise and enlightened persons; finally, if necessary, make certain experiments, taking care, however, to stop in time. =96. Division of social professions.=--It would be impossible to make a survey of all the professions society is composed of: it were an infinite labor. We must, therefore, bring the professions down to a certain number of types or classes, which allow the reducing of the rules of _professional morality_ to a small number. Several philosophers have busied themselves in dividing and classifying social occupations. We shall recall only the principal ones of these divisions.