capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar
objects. in the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like
every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a
particular class of citizens. Like every other employment, too, it is
subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords
occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers ; and this
subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business,
improve dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in
his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity
of science is considerably increased by it.

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts,
in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a
well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the
lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own
work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other
workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a
great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity or, what comes to the
same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them
abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as
amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself
through all the different ranks of the society.

Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or daylabourer in a
civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of
people, of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed
in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen
coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it
may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of
workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder,