keep, or its commuted money equivalent, or the rendering of
personal services to specific persons. For a long time, for example, the
profession of the surgeon and physician ranked almost with that of the
valet or barber--partly because it had so much to do with the body,
and partly because it involved rendering direct service for pay to some
definite person. But if we go behind words, the business of directing
social concerns, whether politically or economically, whether in war or
peace, is as much a calling as anything else; and where education has
not been completely under the thumb of tradition, higher schools in the
past have been upon the whole calculated to give preparation for this
business. Moreover, display, the adornment of person, the kind of social
companionship and entertainment which give prestige, and the spending
of money, have been made into definite callings. Unconsciously to
themselves the higher institutions of learning have been made to
contribute to preparation for these employments. Even at present, what
is called higher education is for a certain class (much smaller than it
once was) mainly preparation for engaging effectively in these pursuits.

In other respects, it is largely, especially in the most advanced work,
training for the calling of teaching and special research. By a peculiar
superstition, education which has to do chiefly with preparation for
the pursuit of conspicuous idleness, for teaching, and for literary
callings, and for leadership, has been regarded as non-vocational and
even as peculiarly cultural. The literary training which indirectly
fits for authorship, whether of books, newspaper editorials, or magazine
articles, is especially subject to this superstition: many a teacher and
author writes and argues in behalf of a cultural and humane education
against the encroachments of a specialized practical education, without
recognizing that his own education, which he calls liberal, has been
mainly training for his own particular calling. He has simply got into
the habit of regarding his own business as essentially cultural and
of overlooking the cultural possibilities of other employments. At
the bottom of these distinctions is undoubtedly the tradition which
recognizes as employment only those pursuits where one is responsible
for his work to a specific employer, rather than to the ultimate
employer, the community.

There are, however, obvious causes for the present conscious e