inventing implements of a higher and more complicated order. Nor is the line which we thus draw drawn arbitrarily. It is a line drawn for us by the whole industrial history of mankind; ◆² and never was there a division more striking and more persistent. For the simpler implements in question, from the first days when they were invented,—“thousands of years ago,” as my American correspondent says,—remained what they then were up to the beginning of the modern epoch; and in many countries, such as India, they remain the same to-day. The simpler industrial arts, then, and the simpler implements of industry are sharply marked off from the higher and more complicated by the fact that, whilst the latter are demonstrably due to individuals, have flourished only within the area of their influence, and have constituted a sudden and distinct advance on the former, the former have apparently been due to the average faculties of mankind, and have remained practically unchanged from the days of their first discovery. Accordingly, the distinction between the two being so marked and enormous, the faculties to which they are respectively due, even if differing only in degree, yet differ in degree so much that they are for practical purposes different faculties, and must be called by different names. ◆³ The simple inventions, then, to which my correspondent refers, together with the wealth produced by them, are to be credited to Labour, the non-progressive character of which they embody and represent, and have nothing to do with that Ability which is the cause of industrial progress. My correspondent’s letter, however, whether he saw it himself or not, really raises a point far more important than this. For even if the invention of the plough had been the work of one man only, if it had involved as much knowledge and genius as the invention of the steam-engine, and if, but for this one man, ploughs would never have existed, yet to attribute to the Ability of this one man all the wealth that has been subsequently produced by ploughing would still be practically as absurd as my correspondent implies it would be. [Sidenote ◆1 Because the commonest labourer, when once he has seen them, can make and use them.]