A man can do his work with singular dexterity if he works unceasingly and exclusively in the fabrication of one thing. But at the same time he loses his human quality; he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the redirection of the work. Everyday he becomes more skilful but less industrious. As a man he becomes more and more degraded. Suppose a man has spent twenty years of his life making heads for pins. The man has a mighty brain, but it cannot be applied by him to any nobler work than making heads of pins. When a man spends a good portion of his life in making a particular thing, his thoughts are forever set upon the object of his daily work. His body will take up some fixed halts. He can never shake off those habits. He no longer, so to say, belongs to himself. He belongs to the calling that he has chosen. The laws and manners are meant to level all the barriers round such a man and to open to him a thousand different paths to fortune. But go all in vain. The theory of manufacture more powerful than customs and laws confines him to a craft and to a place. In society, he remains unchanged. He becomes degraded as a man.
