Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/206

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189
VOCATION

are too apt to consider that a trade or profession is desirable in proportion precisely to the money it offers. But vocation means much more than money. The life of mere money-making is not a moral vocation. We should, of course, remember that many occupations which seem at first sight to be concerned simply with money-making have a significance which transcends this. The business of stockbroking, for instance, does not have money-making as its end-all and be-all. The stockbroker performs a useful social function. Without him the wheels of the commercial world would drag, or might even refuse to move at all. The real value of the stockbroker's occupation is not the money he makes out of it, but the service he renders the community. A particular vocation is not to be assessed simply at its money value.

(2) A man should choose the occupation which he believes it is his duty to enter. It is his duty to play a worthy part in life; it is his duty to make the most of the talents which have been committed to him; it is his duty to use them in the particular calling in which their exercise will be most socially valuable. Owing to the principle of the division of labour, the community offers a man a very large variety of possible callings. With the advance of civilisation, the number of different occupations has risen enormously, and shows a constant tendency still to increase. In a primitive society all men are hewers of wood and drawers of water; but gradually these functions become specialised and new ones are developed. The great increase of the division of labour depends on the fact that "practice makes