404 THE GERMAN PASS10N-PLA Y 



a church to be restored or a side-chapel built, was a 

 pageant to be held or a passion-play acted, then the 

 craft -guilds and the journeymen brotherhoods were 

 always to the fore. In many cases the craftsmen and 

 journeymen were members of the civic body in virtue of 

 their craft because they belonged to craft -guild or 

 brotherhood. The artisan of those days could spend his 

 holiday not only in amusing himself, but in giving 

 pleasure to the community at large. The passion-play 

 may seem to some modern tastes a very crude drama, but 

 in those days rich and poor, literate and illiterate, great 

 and small, man, woman and child flocked to the market- 

 place to enjoy the representation of the great world- 

 drama which the craftsmen put before them. The 

 members of the guilds realised that they were needful 

 parts of the social system ; the artisan was conscious of 

 his position and proud of it. Are there any labour 

 organisations nowadays which are equally rich in 

 result for the workman, and equally profitable to the 

 community ? When do our craftsmen spend their leisure 

 in providing amusement for a whole town ? Where is 

 the folk-festival, religious or social, which brings all 

 sorts and conditions of men together in the pursuit 

 of a common pleasure ? I fear our modern life knows 

 nothing of these things. 



Individualism, economic and intellectual, has greatly 

 assisted the mental and possibly the material progress of 

 Europe, but it has widened immensely the gulf between 

 the various social grades. They no longer have the same 

 pleasures ; they have hardly a common religion ; they 

 have no understanding for the same art, and are scarcely 



