Manual Work and Mental Work

Information Text: In the early modern period, numerous texts deal with professions by presenting the knowledge required in each case, individual fields of activity, purpose, origin and prestige. The course of argumentation is humanistic, insofar as it mostly starts from the human being. The ancient idea of the primacy of mental work over manual work is formative here. The importance of Spain results from the fact that the Spanish king Charles V was both emperor and ruler of the colonies in Ameri