April ii, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



23: 



the same tendency, but this tendency dies away under the influ- 

 ence of the unfavorable circumstances surrounding the child. 

 Every thing here is opposed to it : the currents of American 

 thought admit of no such presumption. The inherited tenitency 

 Ends no nourishment whatever, and dies out. 



That the guilds should have fostered the idea of piedestination 

 is evident. That the spn should adopt the business of the father, 

 in which he had grown up, the peculiarities of which he had 

 known from early childhood, was something so self-evident, that 

 the custom became an established rule. 



Just consider this : the father's shop was ready for him to step 

 into, material and goods were stored up, i-esources for this par- 

 ticular business and a market were found, custom was secured; in 

 short, the father had warmed the nest so bicely, that the son would 

 have been a fool to fly away into insecure circumstances to fight 

 the bard battle for suhsistenre. 



To all this came another powerful motive: liberty of trade, and 

 the right to settle in any part of the country, are of very recent 

 ■origin in Germany. Not only the guilds proved obstacles to the 

 freest development of the nation's resources, but also the great 

 number of independent and often antagonistic states and princi- 

 palities and their governments. Though, through the peace at 

 Muenster and Osnabruck at the close of the thirty years' war, two 

 liundred of these petty states were wiped out of existence, ^here 

 still remained more than three hundied and fifty of them up to 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century; and every little father- 

 land had its own government and boundary posts. Not even the 

 light to change one's domicile within these posts was readily 

 granted. It was considered rank heresy, and an outrage upon 

 time-honored custom, to speak of leaving; it was high treason to 

 leave; and so the son staid where his cradle had stood. Of course, 

 lie spent a few years in travelling as journeyman, plying his 

 trade under renowned masters; but soon he returned to the old 

 nest. 



This exclusiveness was particularly strict within the walls of the 

 •cities. Since their inhabitants had, by natural increase, filled the 

 towns to overflowing, the city government prohibited outsiders 

 from settling in town. The elders of the guild determined upon 

 a certain number of masters who could ply their trade: no others 

 were permitted to open a shop, lest competition might play havoc 

 with their bread and butter. Even the sons of masters had to wait 

 for the death of their fathers before they could start in business 

 or become masters. As the number of inhabitants was literally 

 limited by town-walls, so was the number of tradesmen by harsh, 

 ■arbitrary rules. No wonder that hundreds, thousands, and hun- 

 dred thousands packed up and left, never to return. 



To our own century it was reserved to remf^^fe the tyranny of 

 guilds in Germany; and liberty of trade and settlement has only 

 tieen secured by law during the last fifty years. This could never 

 bave happened if the cities had not first broken their choking 

 neck-ring — the town- walls, — and levelled their ramparts. It 

 was a sequence of the marvellous change in warfare inaugurated 

 toy Napoleon I. Thus we see a beneficial sequence following the 

 terrific influence of war. Such imposing armies as were massed 

 together (1,300,000 soldiers went to Russia under command of 

 Napoleon) made a mockery of town- walls and ramparts, built and 

 thrown up before gunpowder was invented; and they were soon 

 torn down and levelled by the citizens. After the restless little 

 man Napoleon was safely stowed away as a prisoner on the Island 

 •of St. Helena, a time of peace of more than fifty years followed; 

 and, lo ! all the many buds broke open, and out of musty streets, 

 and from behind mouldy town-walls, sprang an exuberantly bloom- 

 ing life in every domain of human exertion. Now additions from 

 outside were welcomed in town. The cities swelled. The band 

 that had checked their growth was torn asunder. 



However, a slate of things such as I have indicated had existed 

 for more than eight hundred years, and had developed a certain 

 mode of thinking and acting; had ripened certain deep-rooted 

 prejudices; had imprinted upon life in Germany an almost indeli- 

 ble stamp; in fact, it had nurtured the idea of a natural calling 

 for every one; and it need not be wondered at that there is still 

 =a, strong current of thought in Germany which directs, or misdi- 

 rects, the destiny and future of many a child. 



Now turn to the Union. Here the people began, about two 

 hundred years ago, where the Germans stand now. Here we 

 never had town-walls, never any guilds, no limitation as to num- 

 ber and grade of practitioners of trade. Here we had no hostile 

 neighboring nations lurking about to invade our territory and 

 take us unawares. Free and unmolested, the people built their 

 houses, towns, and cities, — built them upon the virgin soil under 

 God's free heavens, without fear of sieges and scaling-ladders. 

 Every one was permitted to come, and be was welcome-to build; 

 and if he thought he could earn his daily bread, he could do so 

 without fearing any arbitrary limitations by guild regulations. 

 Competition has ever been absolutely free in this country. The 

 liberty of trade, like political liberty, lias iis own regulator. 

 Trades and industries are governed by, the steady force of the law 

 of supply and demand, and the sleepless instinct of gain prompts 

 us to heed that law. 



The American farmer-boys of " ye olden time " (and they were 

 greatly in the majority) were raised in a most excellent school, 

 that of necessity. The great distances between the farm and the 

 centres of trade made them lend a hand at almost every trade. 

 They learned to repair shoes, wagons, and implements, to shoe 

 horses, ply the carpenter's and joiner's trade, etc. They were not 

 exclusively farmers. The idea that a man is predestined for one 

 kind of labor, and for no other, never occurred to them. 



The peculiarly advantageous circumstances of the New World 

 for gaining wealth ; constant immigration of skilled laborers from 

 all civilized nations; a restlessness, which became permanent, 

 caused by a constant westward movement of the people; the hope 

 to enrich one's self still more quit-kly elsewhere, — these motives 

 stirred all the powers of the nation into a mad whirl. A constant 

 shoving and pressing, an unceasing roaming about and seeking 

 luck, became the ruling passion of the people. The idea of taking 

 root in a community rarely prompts any one here. Is he not the 

 citizen of a country the extent of which is so great that it tnkes 

 him six months to cross it on foot from east to west ? Compare 

 with such magnitude some small German principalities through 

 which one could pass on foot conveniently in a day. 



Now, when the American does not like one place, or if he fails 

 to catch luck or to secure a fortune in one occupation, he simply 

 turns to another; and so he changes readily from professions to 

 trades or to farming, as circumstances seem to favor the one or 

 the other. Since the people have' iiever known town- walls or 

 guilds, they do not entertain the idea that a man should devote 

 his life to one thing exclusively. It is not at all astonishing to 

 see a man shift from book-keeping to cigar-making, from farming 

 to practising law or medicine, from working in a machine shop 

 to doing this glorious country inestimable service as policeman or 

 legislator. 



We must not for a moment entertain the idea that this is con- 

 ducive to great mischief. It is not : I rather think this freedom 

 more beneficial than the humiliating bondage to which, according 

 to the German usage, a man is condemned who has "missed his 

 calling," and has to abide by the consequences of his folly. Let 

 me repeat, liberty always has a regulator in itself. Free choice 

 of occupation follows laws which are as unerring as the law of 

 gravitation. No guild regulation could ever compete with them 

 in effectiveness. Nature's law of the "survival of the fittest," 

 though terribly cruel, is very effective. 



And now we come back to our question, Is every person pre- 

 destined for a calling? Approach the question regardless of 

 preconceived notions, and you will have to consider that every 

 one has his own peculiar face, bis own form; each of his limbs or 

 hands is pecubarly shaped, and cannot be duplicated by that of 

 any other human being. His senses and faculties are in their 

 combination so wonderfully and peculiarly arranged, that there 

 may, perhaps, be found a similarity, but never an exact duplicate. 

 This proves, if any thing, that no two men can be exactly alike 

 in faculties, qualifications, tendencies, and accomplishments, so 

 as to feel at any time, and under all circumstances, exactly the 

 same impulse for action. Every one will move in a direction 

 differing from that of all other men. Evidently, then, the pecul- 

 iar mixture of which every individual consists tends toward con- 

 firming the belief that everyone has a calling; that is, every person 



