Notwithstanding this, the craving for passes, which formerly was the privilege of the few exceptional personages, keeps growing more and more, infecting other levels of society, and would easily become a serious menace to the directorate of the theatres if these had not hit upon an adequate remedy in distributing passes on the homœopathic principle. They fight the “pass with the pass.” They distribute passes and reduced rate tickets very lavishly for the days on which they know the receipts will be poor and for plays which no longer draw large audiences. The exaction of a small fee on the presentation of the coupon serves to cover part of the running expenses; the house is filled and the many’s fire for passes is quenched. On the following days the people are much more willing to buy their tickets because they think that they can afford to be so extravagant, inasmuch as they had seen one or more performances free or practically so, and are swayed by the unconscious instinct that a purchased pleasure is sure to prove more delightful. One would have to be a second limping Mephisto to be able to follow the invisible stream of passes in a large metropolis. The romance of a pass is still to be written. It would yield us an insight into the psychology of modern man that would be second to none. It would prove that one of the most important impulses of our time is the desire not to have to work for one’s pleasures. I say “not to work for one’s pleasures” rather than “not to pay for one’s pleasures,” because money always means an equivalent for our work. The most industrious persons are in reality those who are most averse to work. For behind their zeal to accumulate money there is the burning desire to hoard up as much as will ensure an income sufficient to purchase enjoyment without additional work. In the language of every day this would be: a care-free old age. But, in sooth, worry is the main source of our pleasures. Were there no cares the variegated colours of the spectrum that constitute the light of life would be replaced by dull monotonous grays that resemble each other as closely as the two links that unite the two ends of a chain converting it into a whole. The pursuit after passes is only a small fragment of that mad pursuit after “pleasure without work” that is being enacted all around us. I have gone into the subject so minutely only because it is a typical example of mankind’s stupid beginning to free itself from the iron bonds of material dependence. For the more free we think ourselves, the more enslaved we really are. IDENTIFICATION