BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK. 185 



had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of 

 science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor 

 Robinson ; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his four- 

 teen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with 

 educated men, and thus developed his remarkable 

 engineering faculties ; the son of a well-to-do family 

 could "idle"' at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become 

 later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson. 



We have changed all that. Under the pretext of 

 division of labour, we have sharply separated the brain 

 worker from the manual worker. The masses of the 

 workmen do not receive more scientific education than 

 their grandfathers did ; but they have been deprived 

 of the education of even the small workshop, while their 

 boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from 

 the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little 

 they may have learned at school As to the men of 

 science, they despise manual labour. How few of them 

 would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer 

 instrument ? Most of them are not capable of even 

 designing a scientific instrument, and when they have 

 given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they 

 leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. 

 Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labour 

 to the height of a theory. " The man of science," they 

 say, " must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer 

 must apply them, and the worker must execute in 

 steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by 

 the engineer. He must work with machines in- 

 vented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not 

 understand them and cannot improve them : the scien- 

 tific man and the scientific engineer will take care of 

 the progress of science and industry." 



It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class 

 of men who belong to none of the above three 

 divisions. When young they have been manual 

 workers, and some of them continue to be ; but, owing 



