324 Preliminary Essay to Reports on 



stone or the broken bough, and renders the operation at once 

 more rapid and more agreeable. It is clear that the discovery 

 of these simple tools, the missile and the spade, would increase 

 the security and augment the power of the race ; it is unde- 

 niable that with these assistants man would be happier and 

 more comfortable than before. The labour expended in pro- 

 viding sustenance and in defending life would be diminished, 

 and more time would be allowed for the gratification of higher 

 appetites. The spade, the sling, the club, or the bow, would 

 begin to be ornamented, and man would delight himself in the 

 symmetry and propriety of the ornaments. 



On the first glance one might allow that the same principle 

 would extend itself to every subsequent discovery, and that 

 every means of enabling man to .produce a greater effect than 

 he could have produced before with the same labour, must 

 augment the enjoyments of the race. Such a general state- 

 ment, however, must be received with the utmost caution, since 

 the circumstances of human society are so varied that some of 

 them may even happen to convert the benefit that otherwise 

 would have accrued from such improvements, into an actual evil. 

 So long as each individual family provide for their own wants, 

 the principle has undoubted scope ; but when different indivi- 

 duals have betaken themselves to different crafts, and when the 

 community depends on the barter of good offices, an improve- 

 ment in any particular art may be highly injurious to some one 

 of the various classes. It seems clear that every improvement 

 is ultimately beneficial to the whole commonwealth ; but it is 

 impossible to shut our eyes to the misery which is, at times, in- 

 flicted on individuals. In the present highly artificial state of 

 society, these sinister effects are unfortunately too frequent and 

 too severe, and it is no easy matter for the sufferers to reason 

 themselves into the belief, that what has been productive of their 

 own ruin can at all be beneficial to the community. 



The rapidity with which changes in the modes of operating 

 are now introduced ; and the competition which exists, not 

 merely between the fabricators of the same material, but between 

 those of different kinds of commodities, give an unprecedented 

 variability to the distribution of comforts and enjoyments; so 

 that when contemplating the advantage of same new process, 



