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.

5. The vocation of the lawyer and the judge.

The vocation of the statesman.

The vocation of the religious teacher.

The three last mentioned are classed together as educational vocations, that is, as vocations which, in respect to their highest significance, are branches of the _pedagogy of mankind_, having for their object to educate the human race; the ethical object of the lawyer being to educate society in the idea of justice; of the statesman to educate society in the idea of the state; of the religious teacher to educate society in the idea of the spiritual universe.

This conception of the lawyer, the politician, etc., as primarily educators, is a point to which particular attention is directed. The significance of it will appear further on. I shall now indicate in bare outline what I conceive to be the specific contribution of the vocations mentioned to the formation of a spiritual personality.

_Science_

Conspicuously important in this connection is the question whether and by what means the pursuit of the physical sciences can be linked up to the supreme spiritual end of man. The scientist may develop into a great thinker in the course of comprehensive and intricate investigations, but he does not thereby necessarily develop into a personality. His mind will become in this way a mirror of the orderly procession of nature’s phenomena. He will be the accurate recorder of what happens, the knowing spectator of the play, whose eye recognizes the actors, the forces, beneath their disguises. The pursuit of knowledge of this kind for the sake of knowledge, or it may be for the sake of exercising the faculty of cognition, represents the purely scientific conception of the aim of science. Whatever moral qualities are exacted of the scientist, such as accuracy or intellectual veracity, self-abnegation, scorn of mere vulgar pecuniary reward or celebrity, and at least a provisional disregard of the practical benefits to be derived by mankind from scientific discovery—all these fine traits of character are prized as subordinate to the strictly scientific object. The ethical character of the man himself is not regarded as the supreme end to be fostered by his scientific occupation, but as instrumental to his occupation the aims of which are said to be purely _impersonal_.

There is thus a scientific conception of the aim of science; on the other hand, there is an ethical conception of it. The former points in the direction of the indefinite extension of knowledge which never embraces a totality of the knowable, never reaches a limit, even in idea. The latter points to the _infinite_, not to the _indefinite_, sets up an ideal of the infinite as the goal, takes the man out of the flux, centralizes his individuality into a personality by relating him to the infinite, not as the mere spectator and scribe of nature, but through his action or other potential spiritual beings like himself.

The scientist, in brief, like every one else, becomes a personality by eliciting the potential spiritual nature in other human beings. But be it noted that he is to perform this task _as a scientist_. His particular occupation is to be the means of producing a particular spiritual result in others as well as in himself, and by this means his occupation is to be converted into a vocation.

How? Through partial success and frustration. Partial success in the case of a scientist means for one thing, increased mental grasp, the power to hold before the mind ever more and more complex relations,—a faculty supremely serviceable in mastering complexities of relation in the economic, in the political spheres, in the sphere of international intercourse, in the sphere of the social relations in general, and wherever the ethical principle has to be applied. The scientific occupation trains powers which are to be exercised so as to illuminate obscurities in the ethical field.

The frustration which the scientist meets with when he reflects in thoroughgoing fashion on the business he has in hand is the inevitable realization that _Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss_, that the sphere of the finite in which he labors, though capable of indefinite extension, is forever incapable of being rounded out to a true infinity, and hence that the complete unification of the manifold (in which alone the reality-producing functions of the mind can find repose and ultimate satisfaction), can never be carried out in the manifold of juxtaposition and sequence with which, as a physical scientist, he deals. He will thus be led to face in thought the limits of what is finitely attainable, not only by him as an individual scientist, but by physical science in general. And in proportion as his spiritual nature is energetic it will then assert itself all the more resiliently after this defeat, and turn in a new direction, and towards another kind of truth, the truth which is discovered in the realm of _will_, in the sphere of intercourse with fellow human beings. The propædeutic result of science with respect to ethical personality is the training of the more complex mental faculties. The positive result following the frustration is the new turn toward the spiritual, the escape from the spell wherewith the physical world enchains the mind, the dissipating of the widespread illusion that the truths of physical science are the only kind of truth, the more determined setting of the face towards a different kind of truth. The scientist, in brief, is to travel along the paths of the finite in order to arrive and stand at the gate of the infinite.

I have said that the boon of personality is gained in intercourse with others, through the influence which we exert on others. How does the scientist as a scientist spiritually affect others? The great specific service, as I have just said, which he is to render is to destroy the illusion that the material world is a finality. And it is just he, the scientist, who works most successfully in the field of physical truth who must assist the rest of us in escaping from the spell to which we are all subject. He is the one, he who more than others succeeds in unifying the manifold of juxtaposition and sequence, to whom we look to liberate others as well as himself from the deceptive belief that the reality-producing functions of the human mind can be satisfied in the temporal and spatial manifold. Not from the tyro, not from the purveyor of “popular science” can we hope to learn the profoundest lessons as to the incapacity of physical nature to appease the spirit of man. It is from the familiar friend of nature, from one more deeply read than we are in her secrets, that we are to obtain this great instruction, to receive this boon.

Ethics is a science of reactions. Each vocation reacts upon the others. The general reaction of science I have mentioned. In addition the work of the scientist reacts upon agriculture, industry, etc. The industrial arts, as has been stated, are to be regarded as the executive auxiliaries of science, receiving from it the knowledge of the uniformities of nature, and in turn setting for science new problems by attention to which scientific theory is advanced.

The relations of science to art also need to be considered at greater length than is possible here. I have in mind inquiries into the scientific basis of music like those of Helmholtz, the scientific theory of color and the like, and also detailed studies of the return gift which art confers on science, especially the value to the scientist of that cultivation of the imagination which is gained by the contemplation and study of works of art. There are different kinds of imagination: the purely artistic, the scientific, the mechanical imagination, the ethical imagination. The function of the imagination in advancing science has been discussed by Tyndall and others, but the subject is far indeed from being exhausted.

The scientist then may be defined as one who stands in reciprocal relations to all other departments of human interest and activity, who gives to each from his specific standpoint as a scientist, and receives from each, from religion,[75] from art, from the practical vocations, etc. Ideally speaking, every man participates in all the principal interests and activities of the human mind. Every man is something of an artist, something of a practical or executive worker, scientist, religious being. But in each individual the different interests are colored by his special pursuit, and the influence he wields in return is modified in the same fashion.[76]

There are three great tasks that occupy human life:

1. To build our finite world (science and its adjuncts).

2. To create in the finite the semblance of the infinite, or spiritual relation (art).

3. To strive to realize the spiritual relation in human intercourse (ethics and religion).

This discussion of science affords me the opportunity to give an exact definition of the word “instrumental” as I use it. And the word “instrumental” is of decisive importance as to the entire ethical conception of life. Instrumental in what sense? The finite ends of man are to be the means used in the pursuit of the infinite end. But in what manner are they to be the means? To be a _cheerful world-builder_, to take an active and whole-hearted interest in the improvement of material conditions, in political reforms, in the embellishment of earthly life—how is it possible to do this and at the same time keep the spiritual end in view as the supreme end?

Christianity in its pristine form,[77] abandons the task in dismay. Instead of seeking action in the finite world as a means, it counsels renunciation and withdrawal. Modern social reform movements, on the other hand, are devoted to finite ends, more or less ignoring the spiritual. How is it possible to work in the world, in the finite sphere, for an end beyond the finite? The answer, as I have shown in the case of science (and the same applies to all other vocations), is to be found in the words “partial success and frustration.” The finite, lesser ends, are means to the highest end in so far as we are partially able to embody the spiritual relation in the finite world, and in so far as the inevitable defeat of our effort to do so serves to implant in us the conviction of the reality of the infinite ethical ideal.

The points contained in this chapter may be briefly summarized as follows:

What is the relation of science to the ethical end? We are seeking to link up the world to spirit. Along what line can the connection be marked out in the case of science? Science is instrumental in founding more securely the empirical basis of self-respect, inasmuch as it gives to man to a certain extent a sense of mastery over nature. With the help of science he feels himself no longer the helpless sport of nature’s forces.

The training in complex thinking afforded by science is favorable to the ethical reformer. Science also incidentally encourages the virtues of veracity, and the like.

Knowledge for knowledge’s sake cannot be the final end of the pursuit of science, since the world of space and time with which science deals is not only not as yet rationalized but is not ultimately rationalizable.

While in all the respects just mentioned the pursuit of science is indirectly instrumental to the spiritual end—instrumental to the instrument—it is directly instrumental to it in so far as, at the hand of the supreme scientist, man is conducted through the finite as far as the gate of the infinite.

FOOTNOTES:

[74] Just as the family is the organ of physical reproduction, but in that very capacity is ethically required to bring to birth the spiritual nature of its members.

[75] All that I have said in the beginning as to the relation of the finite and the infinite belongs under this head.

[76] There is one point too obvious to be overlooked, but perhaps it had better be expressly mentioned. The scientist helps us to build our world, the physical nest in which we live, first by mastering nature’s procedures, then by making possible inventions, which increase the security of our footing in the physical world; dispense us from the brute task of pitting our merely physical strength against the forces of nature; render communication between distant peoples feasible, and thereby lay the first foundation for an international society.

[77] _Vide_ Introduction to the First Book.