Occasionally, this elaboration passes the point at which it would give the highest esthetic delight to the beholder; nevertheless, the craftsman keeps pouring himself into his job: he must fill up every blank space, and will not be denied, for carving wood or hacking stone, when it is done with a free spirit, is a dignified and enjoyable way of living. Those of us who have become acclimated to industrialism sometimes find the effulgence and profusion of craftsmanship a little bewildering: but if our enjoyment of the portals of a medieval cathedral or the façade of an East Indian house is dulled by the myopic intricacy of the pattern, our appreciation of the craftsman’s fun and interest should be heightened. Granting that art is an end in itself, is it not an end to the worker as well as the spectator? A great part of craftsmanship needs no other justification than that it bears the mark of a joyous spirit. When we compare an ideal product of handicraft, like a Florentine table of the sixteenth century, with an ideal product of mechanical art--say a modern bathroom--the contrasting virtues and defects become plain. The conditions that make possible good machine-work are, first of all, a complete calculation of consequences, embodied in a working drawing or design: to deviate by a hair’s breadth from this calculation is to risk failure. The qualities exemplified in good machine-work follow naturally from the implements: they are precision, economy, finish, geometric perfection. When the workman’s personality intervenes in the process, it is carelessness. If he leave his imprint, it is a flaw. A good pattern in terms of the machine is one that fulfills the bare essentials of an object: the chairishness of a chair, the washiness of a basin, the enclosedness of a house, and any superfluity that may be added by way of ornament is a miscarriage of the machine-process, for by adding dull work to work that is already dull it defeats the end for which machinery may legitimately exist in a humane society; namely, to produce a necessary quantity of useful goods with a minimum of human effort. Craftsmanship, to put the distinction roughly, emphasizes the worker’s delight in production: anyone who proposed to reduce the amount of time and effort spent by the carver in wood or stone would be in effect attempting to shorten the worker’s life. Machine-work, on the other hand, tends at its best to diminish the inescapable drudgeries of production: any dodge or decoration that increases the time spent in service to the machine adds to the physical burden of existence. One is a sufficient end; the other is, legitimately, only a means to an end.