It does not necessarily mean to “work” or to gain a livelihood. In many cases it is mere amusement or a routine of social customs, or, like the beggar, sitting still and asking alms. Whatever aim it acknowledges, the occupation is one of the most direct and potent agencies in the formation of character, individual and national; in Shakespeare’s phrase, “almost the nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.” Some ethnographers have selected the prevailing occupations as the best of all tests to distinguish the grades of man’s cultural advance. They have divided his progress into a hunting, a pastoral, an agricultural, and a commercial stage. Much may be said in favour of such a division. At any rate, it indicates the close connection between human life in the aggregate and individual avocation. It is certain that the man or the group who have to devote their whole energies to obtain the necessities of existence must advance very slowly or not at all in the intellectual life. This partly explains the stationary culture of the Australian black and the native of our arid western plains. But it does not follow, as some theorists would have us believe, that leisure, the non-necessity of work, in itself favours progress. The reverse is the case. The Polynesians, for whom nature’s harvests were ample, were as low as, often lower than, the Australian. Nothing favours progress but ordered industry directed toward a distant purpose. The manner in which occupations, therefore, modify the ethnic mind varies with the character and aims of the occupations. The first distinction may be drawn in the degree in which they favour social intercourse, and thus promote the unity of the group. In this respect agriculture holds a low place. The unprogressive character of farming communities is notorious. The contrast of the adjectives rustic and urbane shows it to be an observation of ancient date. The cause lies chiefly in the isolation of the farmer, and the suspicion and jealousy with which he usually regards his nearest neighbours. Another cause lies deeper and is of general value. Where there is but one prevailing occupation, where all men’s thoughts and energies are directed along the same lines to the same ends, there can be little social advance. For the best results to the group the movements of individual activities should be in intersecting, not in parallel lines. This is the main secret of the superiority of city life, in spite of its many drawbacks. The respect, or lack of it, with which a community regards occupations is a marked trait of ethnic psychology, and reacts powerfully on the position and destiny of the nation. In England, commerce, “trade,” is widely regarded as somewhat degrading. Yet were she to lose her trade she would promptly sink to a fourth-class power—an illustration of what I have before remarked, that a sentiment of the group-mind may not be that of the individuals of the group.