The Essay on Education identified two sorts of circumstances that form character: physical and moral. Unlike moral circumstances, not all physical circumstances were amenable to human will. Still, Mill pointed out, the most important of them were: “all education is impotent” unless nutrition and labor (and, consequently, health) are of appropriate quality and quantity. He pressed on the point that “nature herself forbids that you shall make a wise and virtuous people, out of a starving” or an over-worked people (Mill 1992, 172–174). Especially as regards the latter, Mill painted a strikingly Platonic picture in 1813, discussing the influence of labor upon factory workers: