CHAPTER XIX - ON THE DIVISION OF MENTAL LABOUR

Summary

(183.) We have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of our readers,—that the division of labour can be applied with equal success to mental operations, and that it ensures, by its adoption, the same economy of time. A short account of its practical application, in the most extensive series of calculations ever executed, will offer an interesting illustration of this fact, whilst at the same time it will afford an occasion for shewing that the arrangements which ought to regulate the interior economy of a manufactory, are founded on principles of deeper root than may have been supposed, and are capable of being usefully employed in paving the road to some of the sublimest investigations of the human mind.

(184.) In the midst of that excitement which accompanied the Revolution of France and the succeeding wars, the ambition of the nation, unexhausted by its fatal passion for military renown, was at the same time directed to the nobler and more permanent triumphs which mark the era of a people's greatness,—and which receive the applause of posterity long after their conquests have been wrested from them, or even when their existence as a nation may be told only by the page of history. Amongst their enterprises of science, the French government was desirous of producing a series of mathematical tables, which should facilitate the extension of the decimal system they had so recently adopted. They directed, therefore, their mathematicians to construct such tables, on the most extensive scale.