BOOK III

CHAPTER IHOW TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN THE PARTS CONTRIBUTED TO A JOINT PRODUCT BY THE FEW AND BY THE MANY.In the first chapter of hisPrinciples of Political EconomyMill alludes to the question raised by certain thinkers, of “whether nature gives more assistance to labour in one kind of industry than another”; and he endeavours to show that the question is useless and unanswerable. In every industry, he says, there would be no product at all unless nature gave something and labour did something. Each is “absolutely indispensable” and the part played by each is consequently “indefinite and incommensurable.” “When two conditions,” he proceeds, “are equally necessary for producing the effect at all, it is unmeaning to say that so much of it is produced by one, and so much by the other; it is like attempting to decide which half of a pair of scissors has most to do in the act of cutting, or which of the factors five and six contributes most to the production of thirty.” If this argument is applicable to nature and labour as agents in the{198}production of commodities, it is equally applicable to the few and the many as agents in the production of social progress generally; and the crisp phrases and illustrations which Mill employs in formulating it, put in the clearest and most forcible manner possible the whole class of objections referred to at the close of the last Book.Mill brings the argument forward with special reference to agriculture. Let us take, he says in effect, the products of any farm; and it is obviously absurd to inquire which produces most of it—the fields or the farm labourers. Now if all labour were equal, and if there were only one farm in the world, or if every acre of land, when the same labour was applied to it, yielded the same amount of produce, this would, no doubt, be true. The actual state of the case is, however, widely different. Acres vary very greatly in fertility; and if the produce of one—the least fertile—when cultivated by a given amount of labour, be symbolised by ten loaves, the produce of others, when cultivated by the same labour, will be symbolised by loaves to the number of twelve, fifteen, or twenty. Here, then, we have a constant quantity of labour, which produces ten loaves from each of the four acres in question; but when applied to the first, it produces ten loaves only; when applied to the three others, it produces two, or five, or ten loaves in addition. About the first ten loaves, in each case, it is not possible to argue. So far as they are concerned, the result is in each case the same; with regard to them we cannot{199}make any comparison; and we must admit that the parts played by land and labour in producing them are “indefinite and incommensurable,” precisely as Mill says they are. But the two, the five, or the ten extra loaves which result when labour is applied to the second, the third, and the fourth acre respectively, but do not result at all so long as it is applied only to the first, constitute phenomena of a different order altogether. The labour being in each of the four cases the same, and these additional loaves resulting in three cases only, these additional loaves are obviously not due to labour, but to certain additional qualities present in the last three acres and not present in the first. In other words, though in producing the loaves, or, as Mill puts it, “the effect,” the parts played respectively by land and labour are incommensurable so long as the land, the labour, and the effect remain the same, the parts become immediately mensurable as soon as the effect begins to vary, and one of the causes, and one of the causes only, varies also.This truth can be yet further elucidated by means of Mill’s two other illustrations. If the two blades of a pair of scissors were made of two different materials, and the one blade were of such a nature that it was always of the same quality, and human ingenuity was not capable of improving it, whilst the qualities of the other blade varied with the skill devoted to its manufacture, and if one pair of scissors should cut twenty yards of cloth in a minute, whilst another cut only ten, the additional{200}efficiency of the more efficient pair would, it is perfectly obvious, be due to that blade in respect of which this pair differed from the pair which was less efficient, not to the blade in respect of which both pairs were similar. Again, let us take Mill’s case of the two numerals five and six. If five is always to be the number multiplied, and six is always to be the multiplier, it is true we cannot say which does most in producing the result—thirty. But if the number to be multiplied remains always five, whilst the multiplying number varies—if it is in one case six and in another case ten,—and if the result of the multiplication in the second case is not thirty but fifty, it is obvious that the additional twenty which results from our multiplying by ten is due not to any change in the number multiplied, but to the additional four introduced into the number multiplying. To these illustrations we may add two others—the movement of a modern bicycle and the movement of a man running. A modern bicycle cannot be propelled without a chain; and if there were only one kind of bicycle in the world, Mill might fairly have said that it was meaningless and useless to ask whether the wheels or the chain contributed most to its velocity. But if there are two bicycles, with precisely similar wheels, but with dissimilar chains, and if the same man riding on one can accomplish ten miles an hour only, but on the other fifteen, the common sense of every bicycle rider in the world will tell him that the additional five miles are contributed entirely by the chain, and{201}the patentees of the chain, we may be certain, will add their valuable testimony to the fact. So with regard to running, Mill might fairly have said that if we consider it in an abstract and general sense, it is absurd to ask which contributes most to “the effect”—the ground or the man that runs on it, because the first is as indispensable to the man’s movement as is the second. But if two men are racing each other over the same course, and one runs a mile whilst the other runs only half, it is perfectly obvious that the extra speed of the winner is contributed not by the ground, which for both men is just the same, but by certain qualities in the winner which the loser does not possess, or which the winner possesses in larger measure than he.Now in all questions connected with progressive social action the effects which have to be considered are not general effects, such as running at some indeterminate speed, each of which effects is considered as being single of its kind, and which, in consequence, cannot be compared with anything, but effects each kind of which exhibits many comparable varieties, such as the running of several men whose respective speeds are different. The whole error of Mill’s argument depends on his failure to perceive this. He describes the result of man’s labour applied to land—a result which we have for convenience’ sake expressed in terms of loaves as “theeffect.” He says “nature and labour are equally necessary for producing the effect at all,” as though the same amount of land and{202}labour must always result in the production of the same number of loaves. To conceive and speak of the matter in this way is to ignore entirely all the phenomena of progress—all the phenomena which differentiate civilisation from savagery, and which it is the special function of economics and of sociology to explain. Rent, for example, the theory of which Mill states with extreme lucidity, and insists upon with the utmost emphasis, arises from the fact that one man and one acre of land, instead of producing something that can be described generally as “theeffect,” produce in different cases effects that are widely different—ten loaves when the acre is bad, twenty loaves when the acre is good: and, in a similar way, when the acres are of the same quality, twenty loaves will be produced by an acre if it is cultivated by the methods of civilisation, and only ten by an acre if it is cultivated by the methods of a savage. Now, just as agricultural rent arises from different qualities in the soil, so does agricultural progress arise from differences in the powers of the men. It is measured by, and it consists of, not “theeffect,” but a series of effects, similar indeed in kind, but continually increasing in degree; and it is their differences in degree, not their similarity in kind, that form for the economist the particular subject to be considered.And what is true in this respect of production and progress in agriculture is equally true of production and progress generally. The former indeed are the simplest type of the latter, just as they are{203}their original basis; and before we proceed farther, there is one fact more in connection with them on which it is necessary for the purposes of our present argument to insist. Of soils the same as to area, but not the same as to quality, some, it has been said, will produce ten loaves, some fifteen, some twenty; and soils may exist, perhaps, which would produce only five. But in order that any soil may be cultivated by human labour, it is necessary that the product should be at least sufficient to keep the men alive who devote their labour to cultivating it. No set of men, unless artificially subsidised, could continue to cultivate any region if the product of twelve months’ labour would support them for only three months. It follows, therefore, from this truism that no soils can be cultivated which will not yield to labour a certain minimum product. Now, though this minimum is, in a certain sense, the product of labour and of land jointly, for all purposes of practical reasoning it is the product of labour alone. It is so because the sole object of practical reasoning about the matter is to determine the principles on which the product of the land is to be distributed; and with regard to that minimum there can be no doubt or question. It must go to the labourer, and it can go to no one else. The landlord, if there be one, cannot take any part of it; for if he did, the labourer would die, and there would cease to be any product to take. Labour, then, in agriculture must be held for all practical purposes to produce the whole of that minimum{204}resulting from its application to the least productive soils which the labourer can live by cultivating; and it is only in the case of soils which are more productive than these, and which yield to similar labour a product above this minimum, that land, apart from labour, can be said practically to produce anything at all.Now just as we can argue with regard to land and labour, so can we argue with regard to the average men and the great men, and measure what they contribute respectively to any given civilisation; for just as a thousand men from some good soil will elicit twice the produce they would be able to elicit from a bad soil, so from a bad soil may a thousand average men manage to elicit, if directed by some agricultural genius, twice the product which they would elicit if left to themselves; and just as in the former case, according to the principles above stated, we shall ascribe the smaller product to labour without any reference to land, and ascribe to land the excess only of the larger product over the smaller, so in the second shall we ascribe the smaller product to the average men, and the excess of the larger product over the smaller to the great man. We shall say, in fact, that the great man produces so much of the product as comes annually into existence when he directs the others, and disappears as soon as he ceases to direct them.Here, however, the original objection of Mill will suggest itself again, though in a somewhat different form; for in spite of all that has been{205}said, it still remains certain that the great man could not produce this excess unless the average men were present to carry out his directions; and the reader will possibly be disposed to argue that the average men may be as reasonably credited with the whole of the product except that insignificant fraction which the great man could have produced withoutthem, as the great man may be credited with the whole of the product except that which the average men could have produced withouthim.Now this reasoning has a certain fanciful plausibility, but it is absolutely devoid of any practical meaning; and in order to show the reader how and why it is so, it will be necessary to direct his attention to a certain fact which lies at the bottom of all practical reasoning, but which few practical reasoners ever consciously realise. All such reasoning is in its nature hypothetical, and can be reduced to a statement that if such conditions are present, such consequences will result; and that if existing conditions be altered in any specified way, the results will exhibit a specified and corresponding difference. If, however, this reasoning is to have any practical value, one thing is essential to it—namely, that the supposed alterations shall be at least approximately possible. No practical conclusion, for instance, could possibly be drawn as to machinery by considering what would happen if the properties of the circle were to be changed, and different parts of the circumference should be at different distances from the{206}centre. It is equally evident that no practical conclusion as to the claims and prospects of labour could be drawn by considering what would happen if the labourers could live without food. Now since no food is producible without labour, a population which does not labour is just as impossible a conception as a population which does not require to eat; and no practical conclusions can be arrived at by supposing it to exist; but populations which have developed and submitted themselves to no great men, not only can exist, but have existed, and do exist to-day; and thus we are reasoning in a strictly practical way when we consider what would be produced by the average men if the great man ceased to direct them, but we are reasoning to no practical purpose at all by considering what would happen if the average men ceased to labour. The latter—or the majority of them—would have to labour in any case, whether there were any great man to direct their labour or no; and the supposition of their labouring is bound up with the supposition of their existence. The sole practical alternatives which can in the present case be conceived and reasoned from are average men labouring under the direction of the great man’s talents, or the same men labouring blindly as best they can by themselves.These alternatives are being constantly exemplified in the actual life of communities. We may see men to-day, not only amongst savages, but amongst the peasantries of civilised countries, such as Russia, India, and parts of Ireland and the Scottish islands,{207}who are still almost independent of any intellect superior to their own, and who maintain themselves by the exertion of man’s commonest faculties only. We may see again populations who have been in the same condition, but who, under great men’s guidance, become agents in producing a civilisation which they could by themselves not only not produce, but could, by themselves, hardly even imagine; and again we may see how in more than one country the energies of the great man, having worked these wonders for a time, become paralysed by insecurity under a barbarous and predatory despotism, and how, as his action ceases, the masses relapse again into their former condition of relative inefficiency.Accordingly, though the productivity of the average men, as distinct from the great men, will be different in one race or region from what it is in another, just as their diet will be and the other necessaries of existence, yet within each community experience furnishes us with comparisons which show us, roughly at all events, how much the average men produce without the aid of the great men, and how much the great men, by directing the average men, add to this.†To calculate these amounts{208}with any approach to exactness will, no doubt, be more difficult in some cases than others, just as is the case with book-keeping in various businesses. But it is enough to have shown the reader that, despite Mill’s contention to the contrary, the calculation is one which is based on the simplest and most indisputable principles, and that not only in a theoretical, but in the most strictly practical sense, what great men produce, when they co-operate with average men by directing them, is the amount or degree in which the total result produced exceeds or excels that which was produced by average men when unaided, and would be again produced by them were the great man’s aid withdrawn.†It is, of course, true that in densely populated countries and in certain industries the average workmen, if left to themselves suddenly, with no man of business ability to guide them, would be unable to produce anything. But so long as the man of exceptional talent employs them to produce anything, they contribute something to the result, and must, for practical purposes, be held to produce so much of it as will provide them with the means of living. If it happens, as is sometimes the case, that the total value of the profit is less than the workmen’s wages, the employer must either alter the character of his product, so as to meet the public demand, or he will otherwise be crushed out of existence as an employer, and his workmen will pass under the control of some more able rival.The absolute validity of this method of argument and calculation will be yet more apparent to the reader when we pursue a step farther our analysis of reasoning generally as applied to practical matters, and consider it especially when it takes the form of a direct discussion with regard to causes and effects. In the strictest sense of the word it would plainly be quite impossible to specify fully the causes of even effects of the simplest kind. The motion, for instance, of a ball when a cricketer hits it, would, in any discussion of the game, be said to have been caused by{209}the cricketer; but the entire antecedents and conditions which have rendered this effect possible comprise not only all the incidents of the cricketer’s past training, but the history of cricket itself, and half the properties of matter. It would be impossible and useless to specify all these. When we say that anything is the cause of anything else, we are always selecting that cause out of an indefinite number, on which, for the purpose on hand, it is practically important that we should insist; and the cause on which it is important that we should insist for practical purposes will be found to be always one which, under the circumstances in view, may or may not bepresent,‡—which a careless person may neglect to introduce, or an ignorant person be persuaded to take away; whilst those other causes whose presence is assumed by all parties to the{210}discussion, and which no one proposes to take away, or which no one is able to take away, or whose number, if they were mentioned, would make all discussion impossible, are passed over in silence, for there is no need to mention them. Thus we all know that when a house is burnt to the ground the causes of the phenomenon comprise the inflammable nature of timber, and indeed the whole chemistry of combustion; but if an insurance office is disputing the owner’s claim to compensation on the ground that the owner set a light to it purposely, whilst the owner maintains that the scullery-maid set it alight by accident whilst reading in bed a novel of Belgravian life, the only causes that will be put forward by the litigants will, let us say, be a candle alleged by the owner to have ignited the scullery-maid’s pillow-case accidentally, and on the other hand a match which is alleged by the agent of the insurance office to have been applied by the owner to the drawing-room curtains intentionally. Or again, let us take the case of a ship’s chronometer. The reliability of a chronometer, any practical man will tell us if we ask him about the matter, depends on the balance and the escapement. It is the perfect “compensation” of the former and what is called the “detachment” of the latter that differentiates the chronometer from the ordinary lever watch; and these are rightly said to be the causes of the chronometer’s superiority as a time-keeper. But a balance and escapement of themselves will not keep time at all. They are useless without a{211}main-spring and a train of intervening wheel-work. But if any one were explaining the causes of a chronometer’s exceptional accuracy he would never think of mentioning these last at all. He would not dwell on the properties of the coil of elastic steel, or on the interaction of the ordinary toothed wheels, or on the steel axes which make their interaction possible. And why would he omit these causes? He would omit them because they would be assumed, because there would be no discussion about them, and because they are implied in the existence of all watches and chronometers equally. If, however, the case were reversed—if all escapements and all balances were alike, and there was no room for superiority except in the main-spring and the wheel-work—the latter would be dwelt on, and the former would be passed over, in any discussion that turned on the causes of accurate time-keeping.‡It was his complete neglect of these considerations that enabled Karl Marx to impose on himself and others his doctrine that the value of commodities depended on the amount of average labour embodied in them—a doctrine which is the most remarkable intellectual mare’s nest of the century. It is perfectly true that if all other circumstances were always equal—the demand for the commodities in question, the ability with which average labour is directed, and the assistance which the genius of the great inventors gives to it—it is perfectly true that then the amount of average labour embodied in various commodities would be the measure of their value; for labour in that case would be the only variant. But, in reality, the important variants are not average labour, but the ability by which labour is directed. The efficiency of labour itself is practically constant; and for the student of wealth-production the principal force to be studied is the ability of the few, by which the labour of the many is multiplied, and which only exerts itself under special social circumstances.Let us take one case more. A man is hanging by a rope which is fastened to a spike of rock, and is looking for samphire or birds’ eggs on the face of a sheer cliff. It is suddenly perceived by some of his friends on the summit that the rope is frayed a yard or two above his head. They are anxious for his safety; and if any one asked them why, they would answer, Because his life depends on the rope not breaking. Let us suppose, however, that the rope is perfectly strong, but that the spike of rock, it is attached to shows signs of being about to fall. The man’s friends in that case will explain{212}their anxiety by saying that his life depends not on the rope but on the rock. In either case it would literally depend on both, and on a thousand other things beside; but in either case one cause only is mentioned, or calls for mention, and that is the cause whose cessation or continuance is doubtful. For similar reasons, and in a similar sense, great men are said to be the causes of all that is done or produced in the communities to which they belong, beyond a certain minimum which, even when not insignificant, is stationary; for though the efforts of the average men are essential to the production of this addition to the minimum, just as they are to the production of the minimum itself, there is no question of their efforts coming to an end unless the men come to an end also; whereas the activities of the great men require special circumstances for their development, and constitute the only productive force which modern democratic activity practically tends to paralyse, or at all events diminish or impede.But there is yet another method, still more necessary to be described, by which we are able to differentiate the respective products of these two classes of men—a method which will assist us not only to assign to each a certain portion of one joint effect, but also to particularise many of the elements of which each portion is composed. This method will be explained more fully in the following chapter, but it will be well to give a general and preliminary explanation of it here. It is founded on the two{213}following propositions, which, when once they have been considered, will be seen to be self-evident. Whatever the many contribute to the social conditions of a community, either in the way of industrial production or of the formation of habits and sentiments, consists of effects produced by those traits or faculties of human nature in which all members of that community are approximately and practically equal. Thus the fact that all men are alike obliged to eat, and that all parents as a rule have a preference for their own offspring, are facts which determine much in the conditions of all societies. On the other hand the social effects which are produced exclusively by the few are effects produced by certain traits and faculties which, though possibly possessed in a rudimentary state by all men, are appreciably and efficiently developed in the persons of the few only. The dramas of Shakespeare, though in a sense they are eminently national, could never have been produced had Shakespeare possessed no gifts except such as were possessed at the time by the English nation at large. The discoveries of Newton, the inventions of Watt and Stephenson, similarly were produced by powers that were indefinitely above the average. It is needless to say that they could not have been produced otherwise. If we will but reflect carefully on obvious truths like these, we shall see that civilisations are woven out of two kinds of materials, the one originating in traits common to the community generally, the other in traits confined to a{214}more or less numerous minority; and even when the two are most closely woven together we shall be able to follow out and identify the different threads, which never can lose the trace of their different and opposite origins.

In the first chapter of hisPrinciples of Political EconomyMill alludes to the question raised by certain thinkers, of “whether nature gives more assistance to labour in one kind of industry than another”; and he endeavours to show that the question is useless and unanswerable. In every industry, he says, there would be no product at all unless nature gave something and labour did something. Each is “absolutely indispensable” and the part played by each is consequently “indefinite and incommensurable.” “When two conditions,” he proceeds, “are equally necessary for producing the effect at all, it is unmeaning to say that so much of it is produced by one, and so much by the other; it is like attempting to decide which half of a pair of scissors has most to do in the act of cutting, or which of the factors five and six contributes most to the production of thirty.” If this argument is applicable to nature and labour as agents in the{198}production of commodities, it is equally applicable to the few and the many as agents in the production of social progress generally; and the crisp phrases and illustrations which Mill employs in formulating it, put in the clearest and most forcible manner possible the whole class of objections referred to at the close of the last Book.

Mill brings the argument forward with special reference to agriculture. Let us take, he says in effect, the products of any farm; and it is obviously absurd to inquire which produces most of it—the fields or the farm labourers. Now if all labour were equal, and if there were only one farm in the world, or if every acre of land, when the same labour was applied to it, yielded the same amount of produce, this would, no doubt, be true. The actual state of the case is, however, widely different. Acres vary very greatly in fertility; and if the produce of one—the least fertile—when cultivated by a given amount of labour, be symbolised by ten loaves, the produce of others, when cultivated by the same labour, will be symbolised by loaves to the number of twelve, fifteen, or twenty. Here, then, we have a constant quantity of labour, which produces ten loaves from each of the four acres in question; but when applied to the first, it produces ten loaves only; when applied to the three others, it produces two, or five, or ten loaves in addition. About the first ten loaves, in each case, it is not possible to argue. So far as they are concerned, the result is in each case the same; with regard to them we cannot{199}make any comparison; and we must admit that the parts played by land and labour in producing them are “indefinite and incommensurable,” precisely as Mill says they are. But the two, the five, or the ten extra loaves which result when labour is applied to the second, the third, and the fourth acre respectively, but do not result at all so long as it is applied only to the first, constitute phenomena of a different order altogether. The labour being in each of the four cases the same, and these additional loaves resulting in three cases only, these additional loaves are obviously not due to labour, but to certain additional qualities present in the last three acres and not present in the first. In other words, though in producing the loaves, or, as Mill puts it, “the effect,” the parts played respectively by land and labour are incommensurable so long as the land, the labour, and the effect remain the same, the parts become immediately mensurable as soon as the effect begins to vary, and one of the causes, and one of the causes only, varies also.

This truth can be yet further elucidated by means of Mill’s two other illustrations. If the two blades of a pair of scissors were made of two different materials, and the one blade were of such a nature that it was always of the same quality, and human ingenuity was not capable of improving it, whilst the qualities of the other blade varied with the skill devoted to its manufacture, and if one pair of scissors should cut twenty yards of cloth in a minute, whilst another cut only ten, the additional{200}efficiency of the more efficient pair would, it is perfectly obvious, be due to that blade in respect of which this pair differed from the pair which was less efficient, not to the blade in respect of which both pairs were similar. Again, let us take Mill’s case of the two numerals five and six. If five is always to be the number multiplied, and six is always to be the multiplier, it is true we cannot say which does most in producing the result—thirty. But if the number to be multiplied remains always five, whilst the multiplying number varies—if it is in one case six and in another case ten,—and if the result of the multiplication in the second case is not thirty but fifty, it is obvious that the additional twenty which results from our multiplying by ten is due not to any change in the number multiplied, but to the additional four introduced into the number multiplying. To these illustrations we may add two others—the movement of a modern bicycle and the movement of a man running. A modern bicycle cannot be propelled without a chain; and if there were only one kind of bicycle in the world, Mill might fairly have said that it was meaningless and useless to ask whether the wheels or the chain contributed most to its velocity. But if there are two bicycles, with precisely similar wheels, but with dissimilar chains, and if the same man riding on one can accomplish ten miles an hour only, but on the other fifteen, the common sense of every bicycle rider in the world will tell him that the additional five miles are contributed entirely by the chain, and{201}the patentees of the chain, we may be certain, will add their valuable testimony to the fact. So with regard to running, Mill might fairly have said that if we consider it in an abstract and general sense, it is absurd to ask which contributes most to “the effect”—the ground or the man that runs on it, because the first is as indispensable to the man’s movement as is the second. But if two men are racing each other over the same course, and one runs a mile whilst the other runs only half, it is perfectly obvious that the extra speed of the winner is contributed not by the ground, which for both men is just the same, but by certain qualities in the winner which the loser does not possess, or which the winner possesses in larger measure than he.

Now in all questions connected with progressive social action the effects which have to be considered are not general effects, such as running at some indeterminate speed, each of which effects is considered as being single of its kind, and which, in consequence, cannot be compared with anything, but effects each kind of which exhibits many comparable varieties, such as the running of several men whose respective speeds are different. The whole error of Mill’s argument depends on his failure to perceive this. He describes the result of man’s labour applied to land—a result which we have for convenience’ sake expressed in terms of loaves as “theeffect.” He says “nature and labour are equally necessary for producing the effect at all,” as though the same amount of land and{202}labour must always result in the production of the same number of loaves. To conceive and speak of the matter in this way is to ignore entirely all the phenomena of progress—all the phenomena which differentiate civilisation from savagery, and which it is the special function of economics and of sociology to explain. Rent, for example, the theory of which Mill states with extreme lucidity, and insists upon with the utmost emphasis, arises from the fact that one man and one acre of land, instead of producing something that can be described generally as “theeffect,” produce in different cases effects that are widely different—ten loaves when the acre is bad, twenty loaves when the acre is good: and, in a similar way, when the acres are of the same quality, twenty loaves will be produced by an acre if it is cultivated by the methods of civilisation, and only ten by an acre if it is cultivated by the methods of a savage. Now, just as agricultural rent arises from different qualities in the soil, so does agricultural progress arise from differences in the powers of the men. It is measured by, and it consists of, not “theeffect,” but a series of effects, similar indeed in kind, but continually increasing in degree; and it is their differences in degree, not their similarity in kind, that form for the economist the particular subject to be considered.

And what is true in this respect of production and progress in agriculture is equally true of production and progress generally. The former indeed are the simplest type of the latter, just as they are{203}their original basis; and before we proceed farther, there is one fact more in connection with them on which it is necessary for the purposes of our present argument to insist. Of soils the same as to area, but not the same as to quality, some, it has been said, will produce ten loaves, some fifteen, some twenty; and soils may exist, perhaps, which would produce only five. But in order that any soil may be cultivated by human labour, it is necessary that the product should be at least sufficient to keep the men alive who devote their labour to cultivating it. No set of men, unless artificially subsidised, could continue to cultivate any region if the product of twelve months’ labour would support them for only three months. It follows, therefore, from this truism that no soils can be cultivated which will not yield to labour a certain minimum product. Now, though this minimum is, in a certain sense, the product of labour and of land jointly, for all purposes of practical reasoning it is the product of labour alone. It is so because the sole object of practical reasoning about the matter is to determine the principles on which the product of the land is to be distributed; and with regard to that minimum there can be no doubt or question. It must go to the labourer, and it can go to no one else. The landlord, if there be one, cannot take any part of it; for if he did, the labourer would die, and there would cease to be any product to take. Labour, then, in agriculture must be held for all practical purposes to produce the whole of that minimum{204}resulting from its application to the least productive soils which the labourer can live by cultivating; and it is only in the case of soils which are more productive than these, and which yield to similar labour a product above this minimum, that land, apart from labour, can be said practically to produce anything at all.

Now just as we can argue with regard to land and labour, so can we argue with regard to the average men and the great men, and measure what they contribute respectively to any given civilisation; for just as a thousand men from some good soil will elicit twice the produce they would be able to elicit from a bad soil, so from a bad soil may a thousand average men manage to elicit, if directed by some agricultural genius, twice the product which they would elicit if left to themselves; and just as in the former case, according to the principles above stated, we shall ascribe the smaller product to labour without any reference to land, and ascribe to land the excess only of the larger product over the smaller, so in the second shall we ascribe the smaller product to the average men, and the excess of the larger product over the smaller to the great man. We shall say, in fact, that the great man produces so much of the product as comes annually into existence when he directs the others, and disappears as soon as he ceases to direct them.

Here, however, the original objection of Mill will suggest itself again, though in a somewhat different form; for in spite of all that has been{205}said, it still remains certain that the great man could not produce this excess unless the average men were present to carry out his directions; and the reader will possibly be disposed to argue that the average men may be as reasonably credited with the whole of the product except that insignificant fraction which the great man could have produced withoutthem, as the great man may be credited with the whole of the product except that which the average men could have produced withouthim.

Now this reasoning has a certain fanciful plausibility, but it is absolutely devoid of any practical meaning; and in order to show the reader how and why it is so, it will be necessary to direct his attention to a certain fact which lies at the bottom of all practical reasoning, but which few practical reasoners ever consciously realise. All such reasoning is in its nature hypothetical, and can be reduced to a statement that if such conditions are present, such consequences will result; and that if existing conditions be altered in any specified way, the results will exhibit a specified and corresponding difference. If, however, this reasoning is to have any practical value, one thing is essential to it—namely, that the supposed alterations shall be at least approximately possible. No practical conclusion, for instance, could possibly be drawn as to machinery by considering what would happen if the properties of the circle were to be changed, and different parts of the circumference should be at different distances from the{206}centre. It is equally evident that no practical conclusion as to the claims and prospects of labour could be drawn by considering what would happen if the labourers could live without food. Now since no food is producible without labour, a population which does not labour is just as impossible a conception as a population which does not require to eat; and no practical conclusions can be arrived at by supposing it to exist; but populations which have developed and submitted themselves to no great men, not only can exist, but have existed, and do exist to-day; and thus we are reasoning in a strictly practical way when we consider what would be produced by the average men if the great man ceased to direct them, but we are reasoning to no practical purpose at all by considering what would happen if the average men ceased to labour. The latter—or the majority of them—would have to labour in any case, whether there were any great man to direct their labour or no; and the supposition of their labouring is bound up with the supposition of their existence. The sole practical alternatives which can in the present case be conceived and reasoned from are average men labouring under the direction of the great man’s talents, or the same men labouring blindly as best they can by themselves.

These alternatives are being constantly exemplified in the actual life of communities. We may see men to-day, not only amongst savages, but amongst the peasantries of civilised countries, such as Russia, India, and parts of Ireland and the Scottish islands,{207}who are still almost independent of any intellect superior to their own, and who maintain themselves by the exertion of man’s commonest faculties only. We may see again populations who have been in the same condition, but who, under great men’s guidance, become agents in producing a civilisation which they could by themselves not only not produce, but could, by themselves, hardly even imagine; and again we may see how in more than one country the energies of the great man, having worked these wonders for a time, become paralysed by insecurity under a barbarous and predatory despotism, and how, as his action ceases, the masses relapse again into their former condition of relative inefficiency.

Accordingly, though the productivity of the average men, as distinct from the great men, will be different in one race or region from what it is in another, just as their diet will be and the other necessaries of existence, yet within each community experience furnishes us with comparisons which show us, roughly at all events, how much the average men produce without the aid of the great men, and how much the great men, by directing the average men, add to this.†To calculate these amounts{208}with any approach to exactness will, no doubt, be more difficult in some cases than others, just as is the case with book-keeping in various businesses. But it is enough to have shown the reader that, despite Mill’s contention to the contrary, the calculation is one which is based on the simplest and most indisputable principles, and that not only in a theoretical, but in the most strictly practical sense, what great men produce, when they co-operate with average men by directing them, is the amount or degree in which the total result produced exceeds or excels that which was produced by average men when unaided, and would be again produced by them were the great man’s aid withdrawn.

†It is, of course, true that in densely populated countries and in certain industries the average workmen, if left to themselves suddenly, with no man of business ability to guide them, would be unable to produce anything. But so long as the man of exceptional talent employs them to produce anything, they contribute something to the result, and must, for practical purposes, be held to produce so much of it as will provide them with the means of living. If it happens, as is sometimes the case, that the total value of the profit is less than the workmen’s wages, the employer must either alter the character of his product, so as to meet the public demand, or he will otherwise be crushed out of existence as an employer, and his workmen will pass under the control of some more able rival.

The absolute validity of this method of argument and calculation will be yet more apparent to the reader when we pursue a step farther our analysis of reasoning generally as applied to practical matters, and consider it especially when it takes the form of a direct discussion with regard to causes and effects. In the strictest sense of the word it would plainly be quite impossible to specify fully the causes of even effects of the simplest kind. The motion, for instance, of a ball when a cricketer hits it, would, in any discussion of the game, be said to have been caused by{209}the cricketer; but the entire antecedents and conditions which have rendered this effect possible comprise not only all the incidents of the cricketer’s past training, but the history of cricket itself, and half the properties of matter. It would be impossible and useless to specify all these. When we say that anything is the cause of anything else, we are always selecting that cause out of an indefinite number, on which, for the purpose on hand, it is practically important that we should insist; and the cause on which it is important that we should insist for practical purposes will be found to be always one which, under the circumstances in view, may or may not bepresent,‡—which a careless person may neglect to introduce, or an ignorant person be persuaded to take away; whilst those other causes whose presence is assumed by all parties to the{210}discussion, and which no one proposes to take away, or which no one is able to take away, or whose number, if they were mentioned, would make all discussion impossible, are passed over in silence, for there is no need to mention them. Thus we all know that when a house is burnt to the ground the causes of the phenomenon comprise the inflammable nature of timber, and indeed the whole chemistry of combustion; but if an insurance office is disputing the owner’s claim to compensation on the ground that the owner set a light to it purposely, whilst the owner maintains that the scullery-maid set it alight by accident whilst reading in bed a novel of Belgravian life, the only causes that will be put forward by the litigants will, let us say, be a candle alleged by the owner to have ignited the scullery-maid’s pillow-case accidentally, and on the other hand a match which is alleged by the agent of the insurance office to have been applied by the owner to the drawing-room curtains intentionally. Or again, let us take the case of a ship’s chronometer. The reliability of a chronometer, any practical man will tell us if we ask him about the matter, depends on the balance and the escapement. It is the perfect “compensation” of the former and what is called the “detachment” of the latter that differentiates the chronometer from the ordinary lever watch; and these are rightly said to be the causes of the chronometer’s superiority as a time-keeper. But a balance and escapement of themselves will not keep time at all. They are useless without a{211}main-spring and a train of intervening wheel-work. But if any one were explaining the causes of a chronometer’s exceptional accuracy he would never think of mentioning these last at all. He would not dwell on the properties of the coil of elastic steel, or on the interaction of the ordinary toothed wheels, or on the steel axes which make their interaction possible. And why would he omit these causes? He would omit them because they would be assumed, because there would be no discussion about them, and because they are implied in the existence of all watches and chronometers equally. If, however, the case were reversed—if all escapements and all balances were alike, and there was no room for superiority except in the main-spring and the wheel-work—the latter would be dwelt on, and the former would be passed over, in any discussion that turned on the causes of accurate time-keeping.

‡It was his complete neglect of these considerations that enabled Karl Marx to impose on himself and others his doctrine that the value of commodities depended on the amount of average labour embodied in them—a doctrine which is the most remarkable intellectual mare’s nest of the century. It is perfectly true that if all other circumstances were always equal—the demand for the commodities in question, the ability with which average labour is directed, and the assistance which the genius of the great inventors gives to it—it is perfectly true that then the amount of average labour embodied in various commodities would be the measure of their value; for labour in that case would be the only variant. But, in reality, the important variants are not average labour, but the ability by which labour is directed. The efficiency of labour itself is practically constant; and for the student of wealth-production the principal force to be studied is the ability of the few, by which the labour of the many is multiplied, and which only exerts itself under special social circumstances.

Let us take one case more. A man is hanging by a rope which is fastened to a spike of rock, and is looking for samphire or birds’ eggs on the face of a sheer cliff. It is suddenly perceived by some of his friends on the summit that the rope is frayed a yard or two above his head. They are anxious for his safety; and if any one asked them why, they would answer, Because his life depends on the rope not breaking. Let us suppose, however, that the rope is perfectly strong, but that the spike of rock, it is attached to shows signs of being about to fall. The man’s friends in that case will explain{212}their anxiety by saying that his life depends not on the rope but on the rock. In either case it would literally depend on both, and on a thousand other things beside; but in either case one cause only is mentioned, or calls for mention, and that is the cause whose cessation or continuance is doubtful. For similar reasons, and in a similar sense, great men are said to be the causes of all that is done or produced in the communities to which they belong, beyond a certain minimum which, even when not insignificant, is stationary; for though the efforts of the average men are essential to the production of this addition to the minimum, just as they are to the production of the minimum itself, there is no question of their efforts coming to an end unless the men come to an end also; whereas the activities of the great men require special circumstances for their development, and constitute the only productive force which modern democratic activity practically tends to paralyse, or at all events diminish or impede.

But there is yet another method, still more necessary to be described, by which we are able to differentiate the respective products of these two classes of men—a method which will assist us not only to assign to each a certain portion of one joint effect, but also to particularise many of the elements of which each portion is composed. This method will be explained more fully in the following chapter, but it will be well to give a general and preliminary explanation of it here. It is founded on the two{213}following propositions, which, when once they have been considered, will be seen to be self-evident. Whatever the many contribute to the social conditions of a community, either in the way of industrial production or of the formation of habits and sentiments, consists of effects produced by those traits or faculties of human nature in which all members of that community are approximately and practically equal. Thus the fact that all men are alike obliged to eat, and that all parents as a rule have a preference for their own offspring, are facts which determine much in the conditions of all societies. On the other hand the social effects which are produced exclusively by the few are effects produced by certain traits and faculties which, though possibly possessed in a rudimentary state by all men, are appreciably and efficiently developed in the persons of the few only. The dramas of Shakespeare, though in a sense they are eminently national, could never have been produced had Shakespeare possessed no gifts except such as were possessed at the time by the English nation at large. The discoveries of Newton, the inventions of Watt and Stephenson, similarly were produced by powers that were indefinitely above the average. It is needless to say that they could not have been produced otherwise. If we will but reflect carefully on obvious truths like these, we shall see that civilisations are woven out of two kinds of materials, the one originating in traits common to the community generally, the other in traits confined to a{214}more or less numerous minority; and even when the two are most closely woven together we shall be able to follow out and identify the different threads, which never can lose the trace of their different and opposite origins.

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