When he spoke of Little Dorrit as “inspired” he proceeded to say:
She was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!
Dickens had reached the great conception that the duty of every individual is to add something by his life to the general good. That we should not leave the world as we found it; that our work is not done well if we spend our lives in digging among the richest treasures of the past and revealing them unselfishly to our fellow-men, but that each should make some existing thing or condition better, or reveal some new thought or principle, or plan, or process, so that humanity may climb more easily and more certainly from the mists and shadows to the higher glory of the clearer light.
Mr. Doyce had made an invention, but had met with almost insuperable difficulties in getting it before the people.
“It is much to be regretted,” said Clennam, “that you ever turned your thoughts that way, Mr. Doyce.”
“True, sir, true, to a certain extent. But what is a man to do? If he has the misfortune to strike out something serviceable to the nation, he must follow where it leads him.”
“Hadn’t he better let it go?” asked Clennam.
“He can’t do it,” said Doyce, shaking his head, with a thoughtful smile. “It’s not put into his head to be buried. It’s put into his head to be made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same terms.”
“That is to say,” said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his quiet companion, “you are not fully discouraged even now?”
“I have no right to be, if I am,” returned the other. “The thing is as true as it ever was.”