Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/200

 be objected that this is an ideal which may perhaps be realised by the favoured few whose vocations are perfectly congenial, but is quite impossible of attainment to the great mass of the men and women of the world. But a little consideration will show that this objection carries very little weight. In particular, we may point out (1) that the so-called higher callings or professions differ very little, if at all, in the opportunities they afford for the union of duty and pleasure from the so-called lower callings or trades; and (2) that it is every year becoming more possible for a boy to choose his trade or profession, and thus a gradually increasing proportion of people ought to have congenial occupations.

(1) First, then, we have to show that the so-called higher callings have no monopoly of happiness. But we must begin by frankly recognising that to two great classes of workers the attainment of happiness, as the harmony of duty and pleasure, is, unless in very exceptional circumstances, impossible.

For the sweated worker happiness is hardly possible. But it is now widely recognised that sweated labour is immoral. It is a thing which ought not to be. The laws of many lands have acknowledged this by prohibiting some of its more glaring forms. Sweated labour is no vocation at all. The moralist says it ought not to exist, and the economist admits that it need not exist.

And it must also be recognised that the unskilled casual labourer has little chance of realising the good life, so long as he remains a casual. But, in general, it is his own fault if he remains a casual. Society does not want him to be a casual. It would have