Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/202

 worth fulfilling. Almost every one of them provides a walk in life in which character may be developed and duty and pleasure harmonised. It has become traditional to regard certain vocations as "higher" than others. The service of art or music or education is vaguely felt to be higher than carpentry or engineering or cooking. But all socially valuable vocations have their part to play in advancing the good of humanity, and all offer worthy lives to those who engage in them. In every one of these trades or professions, the worker may take pleasure in doing his duty, and in the great majority of cases the worker does find his deepest satisfaction in the consciousness of work dutifully done. The professions do not have a monopoly of work that is pleasant. Anyone who has been taken through engineering works of any kind, and who has entered into conversation with the workers, must have been impressed with the interest the men take in their machines and their work, and the pride and pleasure they show in explaining the mechanism and processes. The machine with which they work seems to have become a part of themselves. The workers feel that their machines have grown to know them, and they take pleasure in collaborating with these mechanical partners.

Of course, there is monotony in such work. But in what walk in life is there not monotony? The doctor gives monotonous hours to the treatment of petty ailments, the minister finds that his parishioners are "a most monotonous lot of sinners," the lawyer's work is mostly routine of a not very exhilarating kind, and the business-man spends most