With regard to the present state of industry the gigantic obstacle in the way of improvement is obviously the subjection of the man to the machine. The great hardship which the millions of factory operatives suffer is not only the insufficient wage, it is the depersonalizing effect produced by the substitution of the machine for the hand and the blind subjection of adult workers to the arbitrary will of superiors. (Compare what I have said on this subject in the chapter on “An Ethical Programme of Social Reform” in _The World Crisis_.) [79] Think of Mommsen, the author of a thousand treatises, whose knowledge of the facts of Roman history was unsurpassed and probably unequalled. Yet is his judgment on Cæsar or Cæsarism helpful as an ethical appraisement? CHAPTER V THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST: OUTLINE OF A THEORY OF THE RELATION OF ART TO ETHICS The three great directions of effort are: to work in the finite; to create in the finite the semblance of the infinite; to realize through effort the reality of the infinite. The vocation of the artist is to create the semblance of the spiritual relation between the parts of an empirical object. The object may be a vase or a lamp; it may be a human figure, it may be a group of _dramatis personae_. By introducing into the discussion of art the idea that a semblance of the spiritual relation is to be produced by the artist, we get rid at the outset of the barren formula of unity in variety. Let me endeavor to elucidate the main ideas that flow from this definition of the spiritual aim of art. 1. The two points to be discussed are: What is meant by semblance? and What is meant by the quasi-spiritual relation as subsisting between the parts of a work of Art? First, then, there is the semblance of _totality_. The spiritual relation is characterized by the totality of the parts related. That totality is realized only in the universal manifold. But a semblance of totality is furnished in the case of colors by the circumstance that the chromatic scale is cut off at the bottom and top in consequence of our inability to perceive the colors below and above; the musical scale likewise presents a quasi-totality, and the human figure in its contours presents a thing cut off from its surroundings, and in so far relatively complete in itself. Because the spiritual relation involves the idea of the perfect totality, a relative totality, due to the accidental limitations of our sensory organs and power of attention, may become a semblance of the spiritual totality. I say, _may become_. A certain relation must be established between the parts of the relative totality in order that the semblance shall result.