A third kind of frustration was brought home to me by the problem of specialization, as it presented itself in the course of my efforts to work out an ethical theory true to the facts of life. To discharge competently my own special function, I saw that I ought to be acquainted with the best ethical thought of the past. This meant an exhaustive study of the philosophical systems of which the ethical thought of the philosophers is the fruit. I ought further to be familiar with the great religions, in which so much of the ethical insight of mankind is incorporated. I ought to acquaint myself with the moral history of mankind in so far as it is accessible, including that of the primitive races. I ought to gain a survey of the variations of moral opinion that have so staggered belief in the possibility of ethical truth. I ought to master at least the general principles of the physical and biological sciences, since it is impossible that the first principles of ethics should not be related to the governing principles that obtain in other departments of knowledge. I ought in addition to master in their ethical aspect the economic and political problems of the present day, as well as the psychology of individual and social life, in order to be able to apply with some degree of competence the directives of ethics to actual conduct. There are in addition other subjects, such as jurisprudence, poetry and the fine arts, that have ultimate relation to ethics, and that may not safely be neglected. Behold, then, the problem of specialism in one of its most appalling forms. For how can any one individual hope to adequately fill out such a programme? And what I have said is but my own personal illustration of a general problem that more and more besets every reflective person in our time. And it is a problem that has direct bearings upon the question of human personality. The personality is not a detached and isolated thing. It is a center that radiates out in every possible direction, and depends for the release of its energy on the influences received in turn from all directions. On the one hand, to have a footing at all in reality one must be a specialist, and the fields of specialism are becoming more and more restricted. To know one thing well is the indispensable condition of the sense of mastery, yes, of self-respect. And yet it seems to be becoming increasingly clear that one cannot really master a single specialty without knowing of other specialties whatsoever is related to one’s own. Narrowness, and loss of power, and consequent decay of the special function itself, seems the one alternative. Dilettantism, the other. But again I ask, who can actually fill out such a programme? The frustration of effort thus appears, in its intellectual guise, as one more manifestation of that general fact of frustration which we meet with wherever we turn.[18]