CHAPTER III
THE VOCATIONS
The next term in the series of social institutions is the school, inclusive of its higher departments. But for reasons which will sufficiently appear to anyone who carefully reads this chapter, it is advisable to treat the vocations first.
A more ludicrous mistake cannot be conceived than that of taking the ideal for the fact, the wish for the deed, in matters touching the social institutions. Thus the term “vocational guidance” is often used, as if the occupations of the majority of men already answered to what is implied in the idea of a vocation as if, for instance, industrial labor in a factory were a “vocation” into which the young only needed to be guided, whereas guidance means, in this case, being directed into some mechanical occupation not already overcrowded, or turned into other unvocational occupations when they happen not to be over-filled. But what is true of monotonous, mechanical labor in factories is true in a greater or less degree of all human occupations. None of them at least are as yet vocations in the highest sense.
I dwell on this because, in describing the vocation as the third term in the series, I would not have the reader imagine that this third term exists in any adequate manner. Rather is it to be the task of what is often loosely called “social reform” to create the ethical series,—not only the third term (the vocation), but the whole series from beginning to end, the family, the school, the state, the international society, the ideal religious society. The phrase “social reform” is strictly correct only when used comprehensively in this way. To confine its usage to the more equable repartition of wealth, or to changes in economic conditions is unwarrantably to narrow its signification. Social reform is the reformation of all the social institutions in such a way that they may become successive phases through which the individual shall advance towards the acquisition of an ethical personality.
In sketching the ideals of the different vocations, I have to consider in what way each contributes to the formation of an ethical personality. There is an empirical side to each vocation. Every vocation satisfies some one or more of the empirical human needs; but in the very act or process of doing so, it ought, in order to deserve the name of a vocation, to satisfy also a spiritual need, to contribute in a specific way toward the formation of a spiritual personality.[74] Agriculture furnishes food. The different trades minister to a great variety of wants. The scientist extends our knowledge of nature. With this empirical aspect of the vocations, however, I am not here concerned. A scientific classification of the vocations is not a task to which I need address myself. My task is an ethical classification of the vocations. As this has never been undertaken, the first attempt is difficult and perforce provisional.
I outline my topics as follows:
1. The theoretical physical sciences (including mathematics) considered from the point of view of the specific way in which the ethical personality may be developed by those who pursue them.
2. The practical counterparts of the theoretical sciences, e.g., engineering, and the industrial arts in so far as they depend on and illustrate and use principles and methods furnished by science. Work in factories, mines, and also in the fields, is to be regarded as the executive side of theoretical science.
3. The historical sciences, those which have to do with mentally reproducing the life of the human race in the past, including history proper, philology, archæology, etc.
4. The vocation of the artist.