I'm reading a collection of essays by Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941). Updike was a New Englander and a typographer. His essays are published in a book called The Well-Made Book: Essays & Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike.

Today I read the essay titled “The Place of the Educated Man in the Printing Industry”. Updike's conclusion is, basically, that if any properly educated man is willing to go through the mechanical training necessary to become a typographer/printer, then that man belongs in the printing industry.

In explaining this, Updike has the following passage:

Perhaps for the educated man this form of livelihood [printing] must choose him — he must as a revivalist would say, “feel the Call.” Otherwise it is a dubious adventure, all the more if one is not obliged to undertake it. Poussin was once asked by a young Italian nobleman, who painted but fairly well, what was the chief thing needed to assure his success. Poussin replied, “The necessity to do it.” Compulsions are a great help in work and for those who are not prodded by necessity, something must be found to take its place. That something is a compelling desire to do a particular thing. (Updike, 61)

Updike goes on to apply this idea of compulsion to the printing industry, noting that it is only through the work of compelled, scholarly and educated men that the state of printing progressed to where it is.

But Poussin's words are generally applicable. Stop and think: what are you compelled to do? It doesn't need to be profitable; it doesn't need to be directly applicable to an occupation or field of study. But you do need to find it, or you do need to find evidence of it. It behooves us to consider these sorts of things as we spend our short (and getting shorter) time on this earth, before our Lord and Savior takes us home.

On a side note: I think this applies tangentially to what I wrote earlier about gaining proficiency in NT Greek. There are those who want to learn Greek because they like the idea of knowing NT Greek; of being an authority of sorts. Then there are others who are compelled to learn NT Greek. The drudgery of review and reading, while not exciting, is something they are compelled to do simply because they have an insatiable desire to study such things. Admittedly, I'm closer to the former than the latter in this area.

Update: My friend John posts some follow-up thoughts on the topic of compulsion. Give 'im a read and see if it stimulates some thinkin'.