◆1 But the Socialists have yet another fallacy with which they will attempt to neutralise the force of what has just been said.
◆2 They will say that Ability is the creation of special opportunity, and that everybody at birth is potentially an able man.
◆¹ But the socialistic theorist will not even yet have been silenced. Even if he is constrained to admit the truth of all that has just been said, we shall find that he still possesses in his arsenal of error another set of arguments by which he will endeavour to do away with its force. These are generally presented to us in mere loose rhetorical forms; but however loosely they may be expressed, they contain a distinct meaning, which I will endeavour to state as completely and as clearly as is possible. ◆² Put shortly, it is as follows. Though Ability and Labour may both be productive faculties, and though it may be allowed that the one is more productive than the other, it is on the whole a mere matter of social accident—a matter depending on station, fortune, and education—which faculty is exercised by this or that individual. Thus, though it may be allowed that a great painter and the man who stretches his canvas, or an inventor like Watt and the average mechanic who works for him, do, by the time that both are mature men, differ enormously in the comparative efficacy of their faculties, yet the difference is mainly due to circumstances posterior to their birth; that the circumstances which developed the higher faculties in one man might equally well have developed them in the other; and that the circumstances in question, even if only a few can profit by them, are really created by the joint action of the many.
◆1 This is sometimes expressed in saying that “the great man is made by his age,” i.e. by the opportunities others have secured for him.
◆2 But this, though true psychologically, is absolutely false in the practical sphere of economics.
The above contention contains several different propositions, which we will presently examine one by one. We will, however, take its general meaning first. One of the chief exponents of this, strange as the fact may seem, is that vehement anti-Socialist, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer disposes of the claims of the man of ability as a force distinct from the generation at large to which he belongs, by saying that ◆¹ “Before the great man can remake his society, his society must make him.” Thus, to take an example from art, the genius of a man like Shakespeare is explained by reference to the condition of the civilised world, and of England more especially, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The temper of the human mind caused by centuries of Catholicism, the stir of the human mind shown in the Reformation or the Renaissance, and the sense of the new world then being conquered in America, are all dwelt on as general or social causes which produced in an individual poet a greatness which has been since unequalled. ◆² Now this reasoning, if used to combat a certain psychological error, no doubt expresses a very important truth; but if it is transferred to the sphere of economics its whole meaning vanishes. It was originally used in opposition to the now obsolete theory according to which a genius was a kind of spiritual aerolite, fallen from heaven, and related in no calculable way to its environment. It was used, for instance, to prove with regard to Shakespeare that had he lived in another age he would have thought and written differently, and that he might have been a worse poet under circumstances less exciting to the imagination. But when we leave the psychological side of the case, and look at its practical side, a set of facts is forced on us which are of quite a different order. We are forced to reflect that though Shakespeare’s mind may have been what it was because the age acted on it, the age was acting on all Shakespeare’s contemporaries, and yet it produced one Shakespeare only. If Queen Elizabeth had been told that it was the age which produced Shakespeare, and in consequence had ordered that three or four more Shakespeares should be brought to her, her courtiers, do what they would, would have been unable to find them; and the reason is plain. The age acts on, or sets its stamp on, the character of every single mind that belongs to it; but the effect in each case depends on the mind acted on; and it is only one mind amongst ordinary minds innumerable, that this universal action can fashion into a great poet. And what is true of poetic genius is true of industrial Ability. The great director of Labour is as rare as a great poet is; and though Ability of lower degrees is far commoner than Ability of the highest, yet the fact that it is the age which elicits and conditions its activities does nothing to make it commoner than it would be otherwise, nor affects the fact that its possessors are relatively a small minority. For the psychologist, the action of the age is an all-important consideration; for the economist, it is a consideration of no importance at all.
But it is by no means my intention to dismiss the Socialistic argument with this simple demonstration of the irrelevance of its general meaning. I am going to call the attention of the reader to the particular meanings that are attached to it, and show how absolutely false these are, by comparing them with historical facts.
◆1 Again, Socialists urge that no perfected invention is the work of a single man, but that many men have always co-operated to produce it.
◆2 This is true; but the class of men referred to is that very minority who are the monopolists of Ability. It is this class only, not the community in general.
◆¹ In the first place, then, the claims of the age, or of society as a whole, to be the author of industrial progress, in opposition to the claims of a minority, are supported by many writers on the ground that no invention or discovery is in reality the work of any single man. Such writers delight to multiply—and they can do so without difficulty—instances of how the most important machines or processes have been perfected only after a long lapse of time, by the efforts of many men following or co-operating with one another. Thus the electric telegraph, and the use of gas for lighting, were not the discoveries of those who first introduced them to the public; and Stevenson described the locomotive as the “invention of no one man, but of a race of mechanical engineers.” Further, it is frequently urged that the same discoveries and inventions are arrived at in different places, by different minds, simultaneously; and this fact is put forward as a conclusive proof and illustration of how society, not the individual, is the true discoverer and inventor. ◆² But these arguments leave out of sight entirely the fact that, in the first place, the whole body of individuals spoken of—such as the race of engineers who produced the locomotive, or the astronomers in different countries who are discovering the same new star—form a body which is infinitesimally small itself; and secondly, that even the body of persons they represent,—namely, all of those who are engaged in the same pursuits, and have even so much as attempted any step in industrial progress,—though numerous in comparison with those who have actually succeeded in taking one, are merely a handful when compared with society as a whole, and instead of representing society, offer the strongest contrast to it. The nature of the assistance which Ability gives to Ability is an interesting question, but it is nothing to the point here. To prove that progress is the joint product of Ability and Ability, does not form a proof, but on the contrary a disproof of the proposition, that it is the joint product of Ability and Labour—or, in other words, that it is the product of the age, or the entire community.