Look abroad into ordinary life, and examine the condition of its castaways. One finds himself alone in the crowd of mankind, with wind and tide against him, surrounded by influences like evil spirits, the earth dry and famished under his foot, and the heavens black with thunder above his head. He has no experience, little physical strength, only ordinary talent; but he has nerve and will: he can plod when necessary; he can stoop or climb as the time demands; he can cut a new path when he loses the old one; and so, step by step, he goes on--this gallant Crusoe--till he has conquered circumstances and reached a secure shelter. Another man: but here we must speak of crowds and classes, for imbecility affects whole regions of society at once. A certain branch of industry, we shall say--agriculture, handloom weaving, anything--is struck with decay, and its followers thrown out of employment. What course do the unfortunates take? They sit down and curse their day; they appeal to the sympathies of their more successful brethren; they lean idly wherever they can find support; and failing this, they starve in a body, or drift into the workhouses. In such circumstances, men seldom think even of the obvious expedient of changing their locality, far less of changing their employment. They are rooted to the soil like a plant; when the work they have been accustomed to is no longer wanted, they cross their hands; and so they remain, and wither, and despair, and die. Thus when the kelp business was at an end, the Scotch Highlanders sat down in their helpless hunger, till they were swept as with a besom out of the land they cumbered. Yet what Mechi has done for his Tiptree bog on a large scale, with expensive machinery, and hired labour, might have been done by each of them on a small scale, without expense, and with his own labour. A wholesome living might be wrested by determined men from the wildest nook in Scotland, and the sea alone would support a large population. What the people did, however, was merely to pick up such shell-fish as the waves chanced to throw at their feet, and hold out their lean hands for national charity.
As we ascend in society, a similar spectacle presents itself. All trades and professions, without exception, are crowded with once well-doing individuals, who now serve only to cumber the ground, and obstruct the progress of others. Whatever be his reverses, a man seems to think it necessary to abide by his employment and his station, even if he starves in the one, and excites pity or ridicule in the other. He will not see that he has suffered shipwreck; that he has been thrown into entirely new circumstances; that he must disengage himself from old habits and prejudices, and construct anew his scheme of life. He is one of a tribe, and must stand or fall by his profession and his order. He has lost all perception of his own individuality, and is afraid to take a single step that is not prescribed by custom and example. But, independently of the Robinson Crusoes of the class, many such slaves of conventionalism achieve their freedom while intending only to better their condition. They emigrate to a new country, and find themselves actually in a desert island--an oasis in the wilderness--where it is necessary to work at whatever employment offers the means of subsistence--to resort to all sorts of shifts and expedients, and to submit cheerfully to the deprivation of things they had in former times reckoned necessaries of life. The change is found to be conducive to vigour both of mind and body. The indolent become active, the delicate, strong. Neither the physical nor moral constitution is easily injured, except by the influences of artificial life. A man who dares not sit by an open window for fear of the draught of air, if thrown upon a rock in the sea--exposed for days and nights to all the winds that blow, wet, cold, and starving--sustains no injury. Persons in this situation, or similar ones, have remarked over and over again with astonishment, that they were never in better health in their lives!