THE TYRANNY OF MECHANISM

the tyranny of mechanism, the élaboration of which is the greatest existing threat against the soul of hmnanity; for mechanism incessantly produces, without educing; it copies, but does not create ; and to the extent that it standardizes, it despiritualizes. According as we manage machines, as Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee has so f orcibly pointed out, we tend to become machines. How hardly shall they who perpetually handle machines enter the Kingdom of Heaven! The greatest tragedy walking the streets of ail our great centres of population is the tragedy of imused hands. We wait for our hands to give back to us the art of Uving and the secret of Hf e. The division of labour, issuing in a multitude of mechanical perfections, has almost brought real human progress to a standstill.

It is not a question merely of the dignity of labour, about which much pious and false sentimentalism has been spoken; it touches deeper than that ; labour with raw materials is like the Creative agony of lovers, bruising and exhausting each other. It is Uke a child, or a lamb, or many a young thing, tugging and thrusting at the milkbreasts of its mother. There is a leisureliness, and an amplitude of setting, about ail natural pro* cesses which give the right condition for soul* development to the man who is engaged with them — though it may not be the only condition. To see a whole process through f rom beginning to end oneself, to sélect the materials and literally