e it intelligible; and therefore I must
quit the first head of it here, and pass to the second--namely, how best
to employ the genius we discover. A certain quantity of able hands and
heads being placed at our disposal, what shall we most advisably set
them upon?

31. II. APPLICATION.--There are three main points the economist has to
attend to in this.

First, To set his men to various work.

Secondly, To easy work.

Thirdly, To lasting work.

I shall briefly touch on the first two, for I want to arrest your
attention on the last.

32. I say first to various work. Supposing you have two men of equal
power as landscape painters--and both of them have an hour at your
disposal. You would not set them both to paint the same piece of
landscape. You would, of course, rather have two subjects than a
repetition of one.

Well, supposing them sculptors, will not the same rule hold? You
naturally conclude at once that it will; but you will have hard work to
convince your modern architects of that. They will put twenty men to
work, to carve twenty capitals; and all shall be the same. If I could
show you the architects' yards in England just now, all open at once,
perhaps you might see a thousand clever men, all employed in carving the
same design. Of the degradation and deathfulness to the art-intellect of
the country involved in such a habit, I have more or less been led to
speak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its definite tendency
to increase the price of _work_, as such. When men are employed
continually in carving the same ornaments, they get into a monotonous
and methodical habit of labour--precisely correspondent to that in which
they would break stones, or paint house-walls. Of course, what they do
so constantly, they do easily; and if you excite them temporarily by an
increase of wages, you may get much work done by them in a little time.
But, unless so stimulated, men condemned to a monotonous exertion,
work--and always, by the laws of human nature, _must_ work--only at a
tranquil rate, not producing by any means a maximum result in a given
time. But if you allow them to vary their designs, and thus interest
their heads and hearts in what they are doing, you will find them become
eager, first, to get their ideas expressed, and then to finish the
expression of them; and the moral energy thus brought to bear on the
matter quickens, and therefore cheapens, the production in a most
important degree. S