machine,
Serving as doth a spindle or a wheel.

The division of labour, celebrated with such enthusiasm by Adam
Smith,[27] tends to crush all real life out of its victims. The soul of
the political economist may rejoice when he sees a human being devoting
his whole faculties to the performance of one subsidiary operation in
the manufacture of a pin. The poet and the moralist must notice with
anxiety the contrast between the old-fashioned peasant who, if he
discharged each particular function clumsily, discharged at least many
functions, and found exercise for all the intellectual and moral
faculties of his nature, and the modern artisan doomed to the incessant
repetition of one petty set of muscular expansions and contractions, and
whose soul, if he has one, is therefore rather an encumbrance than
otherwise. This is the evil which is constantly before Wordsworth's
eyes, as it has certainly not become less prominent since his time. The
danger of crushing the individual is a serious one according to his
view; not because it implies the neglect of some abstract political
rights, but from the impoverishment of character which is implied in the
process. Give every man a vote, and abolish all interference with each
man's private tastes, and the danger may still be as great as ever. The
tendency to 'differentiation'--as we call it in modern phraseology--the
social pulverisation, the lowering and narrowing of the individual's
sphere of action and feeling to the pettiest details, depends upon
processes underlying all political changes. It cannot, therefore, be
cured by any nostrum of constitution-mongers, or by the negative remedy
of removing old barriers. It requires to be met by profounder moral and
religious teaching. Men must be taught what is the really valuable part
of their natures, and what is the purest happiness to be extracted from
life, as well as allowed to gratify fully their own tastes; for who can
say that men encouraged by all their surroundings and appeals to the
most obvious motives to turn themselves into machines, will not
deliberately choose to be machines? Many powerful thinkers have
illustrated Wordsworth's doctrine more elaborately, but nobody has gone
more decisively to the root of the matter.

One other side of Wordsworth's teaching is still more significant and
original. Our vague instincts are consolidated into reason by
meditation, sympathy with our fellows, communion with nature, and a
consta