Hen. Yes; I remember Hector bids Andromache return to her apartments, and employ herself in weaving with her maids; and I remember the shield of Achilles.
Fa. True; and you likewise remember, in an earlier period, the fine linen of Egypt: and to go still higher, the working of iron and brass is recorded of Tubal-Cain before the flood.
Hen. Which is the most important, manufactures or agriculture?
Fa. Agriculture is the most necessary, because it is first of all necessary that man should live; but almost all the enjoyments and comforts of life are produced by manufactures.
Hen. Why are we obliged to take so much pains to make ourselves comfortable?
Fa. To exercise our industry. Nature provides the materials for man. She pours out at his feet a profusion of gems, metals, dies, plants, ores, bark, stones, gums, wax, marbles, woods, roots, skins, earth, and minerals of all kinds! She has likewise given him tools.
Hen. I did not know that nature gave us tools.
Fa. No! what are those two instruments you carry always about with you, so strong and yet so flexible, so nicely jointed, and branched out into five long, taper, unequal divisions, any of which may be contracted or stretched out at pleasure; the extremities of which have a feeling so wonderfully delicate, and which are strengthened and defended by horn?
Hen. The hands?
Fa. Yes. Man is as much superior to the brutes in his outward form, by means of the hand, as he is in his mind by the gifts of reason. The trunk of the elephant comes perhaps the nearest to it in its exquisite feeling and flexibility, (it is, indeed, called his hand in Latin,) and accordingly that animal has always been reckoned the wisest of brutes. When Nature gave man the hand, she said to him. “Exercise your ingenuity and work.” As soon as ever a man rises above the state of a savage, he begins to contrive and to make things, in order to improve his forlorn condition: thus you may remember Thomson represents Industry coming to the poor shivering wretch, and teaching him the arts of life:—