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.