already made for the statues. The same thing is true,
of course, not only about the state of the crafts but about the status
of the craftsman. The best proof that the system of the guilds
had an undeveloped good in it is that the most advanced modern men
are now going back five hundred years to get the good out of it.
The best proof that a rich house was brought to ruin is that our
very pioneers are now digging in the ruins to find the riches.
That the new guildsmen add a great deal that never belonged
to the old guildsmen is not only a truth, but is part of
the truth I maintain here. The new guildsmen add what the old
guildsmen would have added if they had not died young.
When we renew a frustrated thing we do not renew the frustration.
But if there are some things in the new that were not in the old,
there were certainly some things in the old that are not yet
visible in the new; such as individual humour in the handiwork.
The point here, however, is not merely that the worker worked well
but that he was working better; not merely that his mind was free
but that it was growing freer. All this popular power and humour was
increasing everywhere, when something touched it and it withered away.
The frost had struck it in the spring.

Some people complain that the working man of our own day does
not show an individual interest in his work. But it will be well
to realise that they would be much more annoyed with him if he did.
The medieval workman took so individual an interest in his work
that he would call up devils entirely on his own account,
carving them in corners according to his own taste and fancy.
He would even reproduce the priests who were his patrons and make them
as ugly as devils; carving anti-clerical caricatures on the very seats
and stalls of the clerics. If a modern householder, on entering his
own bathroom, found that the plumber had twisted the taps into the images
of two horned and grinning fiends, he would be faintly surprised.
If the householder, on returning at evening to his house,
found the door-knocker distorted into a repulsive likeness
of himself, his surprise might even be tinged with disapproval.
It may be just as well that builders and bricklayers do not
gratuitously attach gargoyles to our smaller residential villas.
But well or ill, it is certainly true that this feature of a
flexible popular fancy has never reappeared in any school of
architecture or any state of society since th