In a subsequent analysis Smith ascribes the gain resulting from division of labour to three principal causes: (1) The greater dexterity acquired by each workman when confined to one particular task; (2) the economy of time achieved in avoiding constant change of occupation; (3) the number of inventions and improvements which suggest themselves to men absorbed in one kind of work. Criticism has been levelled at Smith for his omission to mention the disadvantages of division of labour which might possibly counterbalance its many advantages. The omission is the result of his method of treating the whole question, and it is not of much real importance. The disadvantages, moreover, were not altogether lost sight of, and it would be difficult to find a more eloquent plea for some counteracting influence than that which Smith puts forward in the fifth book of the _Wealth of Nations_. “In the progress of the division of labour,” he remarks, “the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or two.” But “the man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”[135] This passage seems in contradiction with the ideas expressed above. At one moment constant application to one particular kind of work is regarded as the mother of invention, at another the unremitting task is branded as a fertile cause of stupefaction. The contradiction is, however, more apparent than real. An occupation at first stimulating to the imagination may, if constantly pursued, result in mental torpor. Smith’s conclusions are at any rate interesting. In order to remove the inconveniences resulting from over-specialisation he emphasises the need for bringing within reach of the people, even of imposing upon them, a system of education consisting of the three R’s[136]—such education to be supplied through institutions partly supported by the State. We can imagine the shock which such heterodoxy must have given to the prophets of _laissez-faire_. Fortunately it was not the only one they had to bear.