THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 69
and asking nothing in return, that enables an order of monks to create so much that is permanent within a short time. No other industrial unit can be compared with them in their power of accumulating results. And the secret is that the monk's whole purpose is his work itself. Whatever his task, whether building, or education, or manufacture, his ideal requires that he have no motive outside. He subordinates himself to his duty, instead of using it to serve some selfish end. The gain derived from the deed, in means or skill, is used only to make possible some vaster and grander effort of the same kind.
This is why the old abbeys of Europe and their associated churches are so beautiful. They cost nothing like the wealth that went to the making of cathedrals. Standing in remote places, they were built almost entirely by peasant and village-labourer. But every stone was laid under the design and superintendence of the monks themselves. Years of dreaming found expression in groined roofs, clustered pillars, radiating arches ; in chantry-niche or holy well or casket-like shrine. The monks themselves were recruited from all classes of the population, but, on the face of it, we might expect that a smith or a carpenter who chose the religious life would be distinguished by somewhat more of thought and organising powers, more of idealism and more of dreams., than the brothers he had left at the anvil or the bench.
This law, exemplilied in Europe, is as true of
