he free man still holds so far as the individual man finds in the
chances, the diversity of interests and tasks, and in the vast
unconscious co-operation of city life, the opportunity to choose his own
vocation and develop his peculiar individual talents. The city offers a
market for the special talents of individual men. Personal competition
tends to select for each special task the individual who is best suited
to perform it.

The difference of natural talents in different men is, in
reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different
genius which appears to distinguish men of different
professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many
occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of
labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters,
between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example,
seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom
and education. When they came into the world, and for the first
six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very
much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could
perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon
after, they come to be employed in different occupations. The
difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and
widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher
is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without
the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must
have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of
life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to
perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no
such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to
any great difference of talent.

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the
division of labour, so the extent of this division must always
be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by
the extent of the market.... There are some sorts of industry,
even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere but in
a great town.

Success, under conditions of personal competition, depends upon
concentration upon some single task, and this concentration stimulates
the demand for rational methods, technical devices, and exceptional
skill. Exceptional skill, while based on