he has to cut or polish or shape in endless repetition without
alteration cannot awake any real interest. This complete division of
labor has to-day certainly gone far beyond anything which Adam Smith
described, and therefore it now appears undeniable that the method
must create a mental starvation which presses down the whole life of
the laborer, deprives it of all joy in work, and makes the factory
scheme a necessary but from the standpoint of psychology decidedly
regrettable evil. I have become more and more convinced that the
scientific psychologist is not obliged to endorse this judgment of
popular psychology.

To be sure the problem of division of labor, as it appears in the
subdivision of manufacture, is intimately connected with many other
related questions. It quickly leads to the much larger question of
division of labor in our general social structure, which is necessary
for our social life with its vocational and professional demands, and
which undoubtedly narrows to a certain degree every individual in the
completeness of his human desires. No man in modern society can devote
himself to everything for which his mind may long. But as a matter of
course these large general problems of civilization lie outside of the
realm of our present inquiry. In another direction the problem of
monotony comes very near to the question of fatigue. But we must see
clearly that these two questions are not identical and that we may
discuss monotony here without arguing the problem of fatigue. The
frequent repetition of the same movement or of the same mental
activity certainly may condition an objective fatigue, which may
interfere with the economic output, but this is not the real meaning
of the problem of monotony. About fatigue we shall speak later. Here
we are concerned exclusively with that particular psychological
attitude which we know as subjective dislike of uniformity and lack of
change in the work. Within these limits the question of monotony is,
indeed, frequently misunderstood in its economic significance.

Let us not forget that the outsider can hardly ever judge when work
offers or does not offer inner manifoldness. If we do not know and
really understand the subject, we are entirely unable to discriminate
the subtler inner differences. The shepherd knows every sheep, though
the passer-by has the impression that they all look alike. This
inability to recognize the differences which the man at work feels
distin