164 Progress and Civilisation. PT. m. 



sure if a well-trained ourang-outang might not be 

 competent to perform it. Nothing is required but 

 bodily strength ; a navvy need not write or read or 

 know his multiplication table ; education, as far as 

 the performance of his task is concerned, is useless 

 and superfluous. In the construction of one of the 

 great lines of railway thousands of men are so 

 employed for months and even years. Without their 

 aid the Railway could never have been made, and 

 the mental creations of Stephenson or Brunei would 

 have remained as unsubstantial as the baseless fabric 

 of a vision, and yet all this amount of manual labour 

 has been set in action by the mind of one man. I 

 think we may venture to extend the application of 

 this example, and to lay it down as a principle that 

 the progress of Science in its application to human 

 wants augments the demand and necessity for manual 

 labour in a far more rapid ratio than it does the 

 demand for intellectual qualifications. The ingenuity 

 of Walton and Arkwright, and the high mental 

 power engaged in the construction of their machines, 

 abridged the cost of production and gave room for 

 the employment of millions of hands in the manu- 

 facturing industry. Yet what can be more thoroughly 

 unintellectual than the occupation of a weaver sitting 





