1.
An occupation is the only thing which balances the distinctive capacity
of an individual with his social service. To find out what one is
fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to
happiness. Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one's true
business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by
circumstance into an uncongenial calling. A right occupation means
simply that the aptitudes of a person are in adequate play, working with
the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction. With reference
to other members of a community, this adequacy of action signifies, of
course, that they are getting the best service the person can render.
It is generally believed, for example, that slave labor was ultimately
wasteful even from the purely economic point of view—that there
was not sufficient stimulus to direct the energies of slaves, and that
there was consequent wastage. Moreover, since slaves were confined to
certain prescribed callings, much talent must have remained unavailable
to the community, and hence there was a dead loss. Slavery only
illustrates on an obvious scale what happens in some degree whenever an
individual does not find himself in his work. And he cannot completely
find himself when vocations are looked upon with contempt, and a
conventional ideal of a culture which is essentially the same for all is
maintained. Plato
(Ante, p. 102)
laid down the fundamental principle of a philosophy of education when he
asserted that it was the business of education to discover what each person
is good for, and to train him to mastery of that mode of excellence, because
such development would also secure the fulfillment of social needs in the
most harmonious way. His error was not in qualitative principle, but in his
limited conception of the scope of vocations socially needed; a limitation
of vision which reacted to obscure his perception of the infinite variety of
capacities found in different individuals.
