. What is true of an artist
is true of any other special calling. There is doubtless--in general
accord with the principle of habit--a tendency for every distinctive
vocation to become too dominant, too exclusive and absorbing in its
specialized aspect. This means emphasis upon skill or technical method
at the expense of meaning. Hence it is not the business of education to
foster this tendency, but rather to safeguard against it, so that the
scientific inquirer shall not be merely the scientist, the teacher
merely the pedagogue, the clergyman merely one who wears the cloth, and
so on.

2. The Place of Vocational Aims in Education. Bearing in mind the varied
and connected content of the vocation, and the broad background upon
which a particular calling is projected, we shall now consider education
for the more distinctive activity of an individual.

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. 88) 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 hi