It is only by mingling with those outside of our own little specialty that we are disenthralled from the bonds of prejudice. It is wonderful to see the change produced in the minds of men of different religious denominations, when by any means they are thrown much into the actual fellowship of working together in some cause of common benevolence. How, without any argument, merely by the fact of their being brought out to a different point of view, the relative magnitude and importance of certain truths change in their estimation! The points in which Christians differ become so much smaller; the points in which they agree become so much larger. The little stone at the mouth of the cave no longer hides the mountain in the distance. Let the teacher, the merchant, the mechanic, the banker, the lawyer, the minister of religion even, still remember that he is a man, and that he can never reach a full and just estimate of his own position without sometimes going outside of it and placing himself in the position of other men. XIV. MEN OF ONE IDEA. There is between the teacher and other operatives one obvious difference, arising from the difference in the materials upon which their labor is bestowed. That class of laborers whose toil and skill are exerted in modifying the forms of matter, succeed generally in proportion to the narrowness of the range to which each individual's attention is confined. It is possible (the writer has known it to be a fact) for the same person to sow the flax, to pull and rot it, to break it, hatchel it, spin it, warp it, weave it, dye or bleach it, and finally make it into clothes. I say this is _possible_, for I have seen it done, and I dare say many of my readers have seen the same. But how coarse and expensive is such a product, compared with that in which every step in the progress of production is made the subject of one individual's entire and undivided attention. If we were to go into the factories of Lowell, or into any of the thousand workshops which are converting Philadelphia into a great manufacturing centre, we would find the manufacture of an article approaching perfection just in proportion to the _im_perfection (in one sense) of the individual workmen employed in its production. The man who can make a pin-head better and cheaper than any one else, must give his attention to making pin-heads only. He need not know how to point a pin, or polish it, or cut the wire. On the contrary his skill in that one operation increases ordinarily in proportion to his want of skill in others. His perfection as a workman is in the direct ratio to his imperfection as a man. He operates upon matter, and the more nearly he can bring his muscles and his volitions to the uniformity and the precision of a mere machine--the more confined, monotonous, and undeviating are his operations--the higher is the price set upon his work, the better is he fitted for his task.