The engine is a sorting rule, not a passion. Employment, rank, gold, and craft are collapsed into one class: motion performed for the opinion of others. Shelling peas and counting lentils are declared identical, so no second channel can outrank the licensed one on the evidence. Books are refused on the same rule — guidance would be a rival heat. The sort is what makes the monopoly look like a discovery. Ripped from the novel: "Am I not sufficiently employed? And is it not in reality the same, whether I shell peas or count lentils? The world runs on from one folly to another; and the man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold, honour, or any other phantom, is no better than a fool."

— In our words · Source: The Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)