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.

Not so the instructor of youth. The material operated on here is of a
nature too subtle to be shaped and fashioned by the undeviating routine
of any such mechanical operations. The process necessary to sharpen one
intellect may terrify and confound another. The means which in one
instance serve to convince, serve in other cases to confuse. The
illustration which to one is a ray of light, is to another only
"darkness visible." Mind is not, like matter, fixed and uniform in its
operations. The workman who is to operate upon a substance so subtle and
so varying must not be a man of _one idea_--who knows one thing, and
nothing more. It is not true in mind, as in matter, that perfection in
the knowledge of one particular point is gained by withdrawing the
attention from every other point. All truth and all knowledge are
affiliated. The knowledge of arithmetic is increased