But I dare not, if I would, in so serious a matter overstate the evils I call on you to attack:  it is not wholly true that such immeasurable difference exists between the lives of divers classes of men, or the world would scarce have got through to past the middle of this century:  misery, grudging, and tyranny would have destroyed us all.

The inequality even at the worst is not really so great as that:  any employment in which a thing can be done better or worse has some pleasure in it, for all men more or less like doing what they can do well:  even mechanical labour is pleasant to some people (to me amongst others) if it be not too mechanical.

Nevertheless though it be not wholly true that the daily work of some men is merely pleasant and of others merely grievous; yet it is over true both that things are not very far short of this, and also that if people do not open their eyes in time they will speedily worsen.  Some work, nay, almost all the work done by artisans is too mechanical; and those that work at it must either abstract their thoughts from it altogether, in which case they are but machines while they are at work; or else they must suffer such dreadful weariness in getting through it, as one can scarcely bear to think of.  Nature desires that we shall at least live, but seldom, I suppose, allows this latter misery to happen; and the workmen who do purely mechanical work do as a rule become mere machines as far as their work is concerned.  Now as I am quite sure that no art, not even the feeblest, rudest, or least intelligent, can come of such work, so also I am sure that such work makes the workman less than a man and degrades him grievously and unjustly, and that nothing can compensate him or us for such degradation:  and I want you specially to note that this was instinctively felt in the very earliest days of what are called the industrial arts.

When a man turned the wheel, or threw the shuttle, or hammered the iron, he was expected to make something more than a water-pot, a cloth, or a knife:  he was expected to make a work of art also:  he could scarcely altogether fail in this, he might attain to making a work of the greatest beauty:  this was felt to be positively necessary to the peace of mind both of the maker and the user; and this is it which I have called Architecture:  the turning of necessary articles of daily use into works of art.

Certainly, when we come to think of it thus, there does seem to be little less than that immeasurable contrast above mentioned between such work and mechanical work:  and most assuredly do I believe that the crafts which fashion our familiar wares need this enlightenment of happiness no less now than they did in the days of the early Pharaohs:  but we have forgotten this necessity, and in consequence have reduced handicraft to such degradation, that a learned, thoughtful, and humane man can set forth as an axiom that no man will work except to earn leisure thereby.