at mass of men are of a
humdrum sort, not born with any marked bent or loftiness of character'
he is simply denying the Christian religion. To argue the point with him
would carry us too far. We will do no more here than remind him that the
people to whom the Founder of Christianity preached, and even those who
were chosen to be its first disciples, were, like this audience,
distinctly humdrum, and that assuredly the American Professor would not
have discerned in them promising material for a world-transforming
religious movement. What people see in others is often a mirror of
themselves. Perhaps Professor Taussig, in spite of his excellent book,
is rather a humdrum person himself.

When, however, Professor Taussig declares that 'the greater part of the
world's work is not in itself felt to be pleasurable' he is saying what,
under existing conditions, we must all recognize to be true. A year or
two ago Mr. Graham Wallas made an investigation into this very question,
the results of which confirmed the general impression that modern
workmen find little happiness in their work.[72] But two of the
conclusions which he reached conflict in a rather curious way with the
statement of Professor Taussig. Mr. Wallas's evidence, which was largely
drawn from students of Ruskin College, led him to the conclusion 'that
there is less pleasantness or happiness in work the nearer it approaches
the fully organized Great Industry'. The only workman who spoke
enthusiastically of his work was an agricultural labourer who 'was very
emphatic with regard to the pleasure to be obtained from agricultural
work'. Professor Taussig, on the other hand, selects four agricultural
occupations, ditching, delving, sowing, and reaping, as
characteristically unpleasant and looks to machinery and the apparatus
of the Industrial Revolution to counteract this unpleasantness. But the
most interesting evidence gathered by Mr. Wallas was that relating to
women workers. He had an opportunity of collecting the views of girls
employed in the laundries and poorer kind of factories in Boston. 'The
answers', he says,[73] 'surprised me greatly. I expected to hear those
complaints about bad wages, hard conditions and arbitrary discipline
which a body of men working at the same grade of labour would certainly
have put forward. But it was obvious that the question "Are you happy?"
meant to the girls "Are you happier than you would have been if you had
stayed at home instea