48 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
probably be classified in a directory of occupations as a banker or financier. And it is, of course, the real occupation which is so dominant in the formation of a man s mental system. In fields of experience not immediately involved in this he may form systems of ideas which are only loosely related to his central system ; and in fields still more distant he may build up systems which are never brought into any perceptible correlation with the one organized in the occupa tion. But in so far as he attains to mental unification and, of course, he must have some degree of mental unity it will in the main come through the assimilation of all his other systems of ideas to this dominant one ; and doubtless this dominant one will, in any case, act as a sort of subcon scious control, determining more or less completely both the content and the form of the systems built up in remote fields, although both within the dominant system and between it and the subordinate ones many inconsistencies are likely to remain.
Of course, the ideas originating in the subordinate or col lateral fields react upon the central system and modify to some extent the view of life and mode of thought which are the resultant of one s chief activities; and some rare men, perhaps, are so broad in their sympathies and so many sided and versatile in their intellectual life that their mental development can not be determined by the narrow limits of a specialized occupation. But ordinarily people engaged in the various forms of " practical work " and in the so-called " professions " do not rise far above these limits ; and those who devote themselves to scientific pursuits usually find themselves inevitably limited to fractional departments of any great realm of science, and these constitute the axes around which their mental systems are organized.
In connection with the dominant influence of the occupa tion we must consider the fact that our modern life is char acterized by a minute and constantly increasing division of labour. The differentiation of occupations has gone on until it has become a fact of most striking significance; and the
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