to despise the person who cannot on occasion, for due cause shown, subordinate his private scheme of life to some larger and less personally appealing cause. Thus I doubt if there would be any general condemnation of the life of the recluse as such. Anyone who felt that for him the good was to be attained by withdrawing from the conflict of the world would not be regarded as of the highest human type; but he would hardly be of necessity morally despised. But a recluse who should persist in his seclusion when he might render important service to his country at war, would most certainly arouse in us a feeling of moral reprobation. And situations the same in principle arise constantly in the course of the most normal living. The very commitment to a given line of conduct automatically gives rise to responsibilities which do not limit themselves to our prearranged plans. And when responsibilities are assumed, or imposed, we cannot judge the man who does not meet them with some regard to the relative quantitative importance of interests, without a feeling of distaste.
This is the truth contained in the ethical principle, 'my vocation and its duties.' Such a principle is defective in the form in which it has sometimes been defended, because it inclines to think of my 'vocation' as settled for me; it minimizes the essential need that I should be enabled to choose my own vocation and adopt it freely, and so lends itself to a political and social conservatism. But when we have once allowed that 'vocation' is something which ought of itself to be determined from within, and that social arrangements should be directed to this end, there still remains a large field within which, if I am to be able to retain my self-respect, duty must help to shape my life as well as inclination; since a vocation once assumed can only be carried on in a world constantly presenting me with unwelcome alternatives, which however I can ignore only at the risk of feeling degraded in my own eyes. Nor, of course, is it possible to free ourselves entirely from the coërcion of circumstances even in the choice of a vocation at the start. A man of conscience, born to high rank or vast wealth, and so made responsible for large interests in terms of possible human welfare, or one whom
