es care of her little children has to go through a
thousand tiresome actions which would be intolerable if they were
meaningless, but which compose a beautiful life if they are held
together by the aim which the motherly love sees before it. Whatever
work a human being may perform, force on his mind the treacherous
suggestion that it is meaningless, that it is slavery, that others
seize the profit, and he must hate it and feel it an unbearable
hardship. It has often been observed that the most bitter complaints
have always come from those workers who are reached by the suggestions
of theories and not from those who simply face practice, even though
their life may be a much harder one. In Russia the workingmen of the
city found their life so intolerable that revolts broke out, while the
rural classes were satisfied with conditions of much more cruel
deprivation. Our social reformers too easily forget the one great
teaching of the history of mankind, that the most powerful factor in
the world is the ideas. Surely there is some truth even in that
one-sided picture of the history of civilization which makes
everything dependent upon economic conditions, but the element of
truth which is contained therein is due to the fact that economic
conditions may influence the ideas. The ideas are the really decisive
agencies. Only for ideas have men been ready to die, and for ideas
have they killed one another. Give to the world the idea that earthly
goods are useless and heavenly goods alone valuable, and in this
kingdom of the religious idea the beggarly rags of the monk are more
desired than the gold of the mighty. Religion and patriotism, honour
and loyalty, ambition and love, reform ideals and political goals,
aesthetic, intellectual, and moral ideas have turned the great wheel of
history. Give to the workingman the right kind of ideas, the right
attitude toward his work, and all the hardship becomes blessedness and
the suffering glory. His best payment then will be the satisfaction of
carrying his stone to the great temple of human progress, even though
it may not be a cornerstone.

Even the complaint repeated without end that the workingman's task is
unendurable because of its unceasing monotony is ultimately nothing
but a psychological theory, and this theory is superficial and
misleading. It is easy to point out to the suggestible mind that there
is a wonderful enrichment of life in variety, and that uniformity must
therefor