Any one armed with an adequate implement of authority, whether the control of the means of subsistence or the power of inflicting punishment, can secure, within limits, from any ordinary man the punctual performance of any ordinary manual task, and the performance of it in a prescribed way; but he is able to do this for the following reasons only: So far as ordinary labour is concerned, any one man, by simply observing another, can tell with approximate accuracy what the other man can do--whether he can trundle a wheel-barrow, hit a nail on the head, file a casting, or lay brick on brick. Further, the director of labour knows the precise nature of the result which he requires in each case that the individual labourer shall accomplish. Hence he can exact from each labourer conformity to the injunctions laid on him, in respect both of the general character and the particular application of his efforts. But in respect of the faculties distinctive of those exceptional men by whom alone ordinary labour can be directed to the best advantage, both these conditions are wanting. It is impossible to tell that any man of ability possesses any exceptional faculties for directing labour at all, unless he himself chooses to show them; and, indeed, until circumstances supply him with some motive for showing them, he may very well not be aware that he possesses such faculties himself. Moreover, even if he gives the world some reason to suspect their existence, the world at large will not know what he can do with them, and will consequently be unable to impose on him any definite task. A pressgang could have forced Columbus to labour as a common seaman; but not all the population of Europe could have forced him to discover a world beyond the Atlantic; for the mass of his contemporaries, until his enterprise proved successful, obstinately refused to believe that there was such a world to discover.