Every vocation on its ethical side is educational. The reason for accentuating the educational aspect of the vocations connected with the state is that this educational significance is generally overlooked. The vocations referred to are those of the lawyer, the judge, the statesman, the teacher in the narrower sense of the word (the teacher in schools and universities). _The Vocation of the Lawyer_ Vocation, as I use the term, invariably means related to the spiritual end of life. A profession or occupation becomes a vocation when he who follows it seeks to respond to the _call_ of the latent spiritual possibilities in his fellowmen. If this be not the common definition of calling or vocation, yet I think it will bear scrutiny. It is the vocation of the lawyer to be the _teacher of justice_ to his clients,—I mean of justice in so far as it is already embodied in law,—and at the same time to promote a desire for and a preliminary understanding of the justice which is not yet embodied in law. The lawyer is commonly regarded as the learned _alter ego_ of his client. The lawyer is the client as he would be if he were versed in the law, and skilled to employ it in his interest. The client is supposed to be an egotist, intent solely on securing his advantage to the fullest extent possible under the existing system of social regulations. The lawyer is his expert substitute. The judge appears on the scene as the impartial representative of the law. From the vocational point of view the lawyer is an assistant to the judge, the agent not so much of his client as of justice. He is as much interested in the just issue of the suit as is his legal opponent. His educational function is to teach his client to take the same point of view. Another point, no less important, is the following: Law is a system of general rules, at best a rude social mechanics. And even as such it is constantly deflected from its ostensible purpose by selfishness and prejudice. The discriminations against women, the conspiracy laws against combinations of laborers, the laws enacted in the interests of landed aristocracies, are ample evidence in point. In every country the law as it stands is still largely infected with unfair discriminations, and it is the special duty of those who follow the legal vocation to open the eyes of their clients and of the public to these defects and to suggest remedies. Every vocation has its special vice, that is, a kind of behavior the very opposite of that prescribed by the particular ethical function with which it is charged. The vice of the lawyer is _blind_ conservatism (unless he is at the same time progressive and conservative he fails to fulfil his ethical function). The judge, too, is a teacher, especially in criminal cases. The voice of the judge, when he pronounces sentence on a criminal, should reverberate throughout the whole of society, awakening all men to the fact that society as such shares the guilt.