Specialization is the foundation of all craftsmanship and therefore the source of all industrial progress. We recognize this, of course, in common speech. 'Practice makes perfect,' 'Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,' are only different ways of saying that it is not enough to be 'ready' and 'observant', but that continued activity and concentration are necessary. A perfect industrial community would not be a community where everybody was doing the same thing: nor would it be a community where every one was doing just what he liked at the moment: it would be a community where every one was putting all his strength into the work which he was by nature best qualified to do--where, in the words of Kipling: No one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of Things as They Are. Progress in industry, then, on this side, consists in increasing specialization and in the perfection of the relationship between the workman and his work. Man in this world is destined to labour, and labour is often described as the curse of Adam. But in reality, as every one knows who has tried it, or observed the habits of those who have, idleness is far more of a curse than labour. Few men--at any rate in the temperate zone--can be consistently idle and remain happy. The born idler is almost as rare as the born poet. Most men, and, it must be added, most women, are happier working. If holidays were the rule and work the exception the world would be a much less cheerful place than it is even to-day. Purposeful activity is as natural to man as playing is to a kitten. From a purely natural point of view, no one has ever given a better definition of happiness than Aristotle when he defined it as _an activity of the soul in the direction of excellence in an unhampered life_. By excellence, of course, in this famous definition, Aristotle does not mean simply virtue: he means excellence in work. It is impossible, as we all know, to be good in the abstract. We must be good in some particular directions, _at_ some particular thing. And the particular thing that we are good at is _our_ work, our craft, our art--or, to use our less aesthetic English word, for which there is no equivalent in Greek, our duty. If happiness is to be found in doing one's duty, it does not result from doing that duty badly, but from doing it well--turning out, as we say, a thoroughly good piece of work, whether a day's work or a life work. There is a lingering idea, still held in some quarters, that the more unpleasant an activity is the more virtuous it is. This is a mere barbarous survival from the days of what Nietzsche called slave-morality. We are each of us born with special individual gifts and capacities. There is, if we only knew it, some particular kind or piece of work which we are pre-eminently fitted to