Society, to be sure, has a convenient means of correction. The
individual tries, and when he is doing his work too badly, he loses
his job, he is pushed out from the career which be has chosen, with
the great probability that he will be crushed by the wheels of social
life. It is a rare occurrence for the man who is a failure in his
chosen vocation, and who has been thrown out of it, to happen to come
into the career in which he can make a success. Social statistics show
with an appalling clearness what a burden and what a danger to the
social body is growing from the masses of those who do not succeed and
who by their lack of success become discouraged and embittered. The
social psychologist cannot resist the conviction that every single
one could have found a place in which he could have achieved something
of value for the commonwealth. The laborer, who in spite of his best
efforts shows himself useless and clumsy before one machine, might
perhaps have done satisfactory work in the next mill where the
machines demand another type of mental reaction. His psychical rhythm
and his inner functions would be able to adjust themselves to the
requirements of the one kind of labor and not to those of the other.
Truly the whole social body has had to pay a heavy penalty for not
making even the faintest effort to settle systematically the
fundamental problem of vocational choice, the problem of the psychical
adaptation of the individuality.
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