And here we are brought to the threshold of a new order of facts. Industrial production, which is the basis of all civilisation, is not, says Mr. Spencer, started on its progressive career by the sudden orders of any one remarkable man, but by the spontaneous action of certain natural causes. It must first be observed that its general character and its progress are always found to depend on the same thing. They depend on the division of labour. This, as Mr. Spencer says, developed in varying degrees, is the salient characteristic of every civilisation in the world. To what, then, is the division of labour, in the first instance, itself due? This is the opening question asked by Adam {32} Smith in his _Wealth of Nations_; and he seems to regard it as one which is more or less mysterious and recondite. The answer which he himself suggests is, that there exists in man “_a natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange_.” The answer given by Mr. Herbert Spencer is a curious illustration of how far, since the days of Adam Smith, social science has progressed. Mr. Spencer shows us that the origin of the division of labour was no special propensity mysteriously innate in man. Its origin was the natural diversity of the various districts inhabited by the groups of men who originally took part in it. Thus “_some of the Fiji Islands_,” he writes, “_are famous for wooden implements, others for mats and baskets, others for pots and pigments—unlikenesses between the natural products of the islands being the causes. . . . So also . . . the shoes of the ancient Peruvians were made in the provinces where aloes are most abundant, for they were made of the leaves of an aloe called ‘maguey.’ The arms were supplied by the provinces where the materials for making them were most abundant_.” Division of labour, in short, was primarily a localisation of industries, caused by the fact that a number of man’s different needs were each supplied most easily by industry in some different locality.