“We have much studied and much perfected of late, the great civilised invention of the division of labour, only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided, but the men:—divided into mere segments of men,—broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now, it is a good and desirable thing truly to make many pins in a day, but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points are polished—sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is,—we should think there might be some loss in it also; and the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace-blast, is all in very deed for this,—that we manufacture everything there except men,—we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages; and all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads, can be met only in one way,—not by teaching nor preaching; for to teach them is but to show them their misery; and to preach to them—if we do nothing more than preach,—is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty or cheapness, as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman, and by equally determined demand for the products and results of a healthy and ennobling labour.” .... “We are always in these days trying to separate the two (intellect and work). We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working; and we call one a gentleman and the other an operative; whereas, the workman ought to be often thinking, and the thinker often working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense. It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity.” Wordsworth, however, had said the same thing before either of us: “Our life is turn’d Out of her course wherever man is made An offering or a sacrifice,—a tool Or implement,—a passive thing employed As a brute mean, without acknowledgment Of common right or interest in the end, Used or abused as selfishness may prompt. Say what can follow for a rational soul Perverted thus, but weakness in all good And strength in evil?” [Illustration] And this leads us to the consideration of another mistake, analogous with the above, but referable in its results chiefly to the higher, or what Mr. Ruskin calls the _thinking_, classes of the community.