evident that the
increment of wealth which results from the obedience of labourers to
injunctions which do not emanate from themselves, is produced by the man
who gives the injunctions, and not by the men who obey them.

But here we must return to the argument, already mentioned in passing,
which may be restated thus: A thousand labourers, directed by their own
intelligence only, produce a product whose amount we will call a
thousand. The same labourers are directed by a man of ability, and the
product rises from one thousand to two. But if the production of this
second thousand is to be credited to the man of ability on the ground
that, were the ability absent, no second thousand would be produced, we
may reach by the same reasoning a conclusion precisely opposite, and
credit not only the first, but both the thousands to labour, on the
ground that, if the labour were absent, nothing would be produced at
all. The argument is plausible; and in order to understand its fallacy
we must give our attention to a fact, not generally realised, which is
involved in all practical reasoning about all causes whatsoever.

If we use the word "cause" in its strict speculative sense, the number
of causes involved in the simplest effect is infinite. Let us take, for
example, the speed of a horse which wins a race. Why does the speed of
this horse exceed that of the others? We may in answer point to
qualities of its individual organism. But these will carry us back to
all its recorded ancestors--sires and dams for a large number of
generations: and even so we shall have been taken but a small part of
our way. The remotest of these ancestors--why were they horses at all?
For our answer we must travel through the stages of organic evolution,
till we reach the point at which animal and vegetable life were one. Had
any of these antecedents been missing, the winning race-horse would not
have won the race. Nor is this all. We have to include in our causes
air, gravitation, and the fact that the earth is solid. No horse could
win on turf which was based on vapour. But by all the thousands who
witness a great race this whole mass of ulterior, though necessary,
causes is ignored. The only causes which for them have any practical
interest are those comprised in the organism of the winning horse
itself. Who would contend that this horse had not won its own victory,
on the ground that part of its own speed--a part which could not be
calculated--was