Such suppositions are for
practical purposes meaningless. But with the directive ability of the
few, as opposed to the directed labour of the many, the case is
dramatically different. For while there never can be any question of the
directive faculties of the few being left alone in a world where there
is no labour--for in the case of the majority, nature, the eternal
taskmaster, will always make labour compulsory, so long as stomachs want
food and naked backs want clothing--there constantly has been, and there
may be again, a question of whether this mass of ordinary human labour
shall find any exceptional ability so developed and so organised as to
direct it. In the earlier states of society no such ability was
operative. In savage communities it is not operative now; and there is
constantly a question, among modern civilised nations, whenever the
security of social institutions is threatened, of the action of this
faculty being temporarily suspended altogether, either because those
persons possessing it are deprived of the motives without which they
will not exert it, or else because the labourers individually, on one
ground or another, are impatient of submitting themselves to the
direction of any intelligences but their own.

In other words, when we are seeking to measure the products due
respectively to directive ability and to labour, by computing what would
happen if either of these agencies were withdrawn, the withdrawal of one
of them--that is to say, of ability--can alone be taken as possible by
any practical reasoner. We have before us practically two alternatives
only. One is a condition of things under which the exceptional ability
of the few directs and co-ordinates the labour of the average many. The
other is a condition of things under which the labour of the average
many has to exert itself with the same severe continuity, but is guided,
co-ordinated, and stimulated by none of those special faculties which
raise a few men above the general level of efficiency. When these
special faculties are applied to the direction of average labour, the
output of wealth increases. When their application is interfered with or
ceases, the output of wealth declines; and in the only practical sense
of the words "cause" or "producer," these faculties of direction, or the
exceptional persons who exercise them, are the true causes or producers
of the whole of that portion of wealth which comes into being with their
activi