These considerations bring us to another important point, which must indeed from the beginning have been more or less obvious, but which must now be stated explicitly. ◆¹ That point is, that when we speak of Ability as producing at any given time such and such a portion of the national income, as distinguished from the portion which is produced by Labour, we are speaking of Ability possessed by living men, who possess it either in the form of their own superior faculties, assimilating, utilising, and adding to the inventions and discoveries of their predecessors; or in the form of inherited Capital, which those predecessors have produced and left to them. Thus, though dead men like Arkwright, or Watt, or Stevenson may, in a certain theoretical sense, be considered as continuing to produce wealth still, they cannot be considered to do so in any sense that is practical; because they cannot as individuals put forward any practical claims, or influence the situation any further by their actions. For all practical purposes, then, their Ability as a productive force exists only in those living men who inherit or give effect to its results. Now, of the externalised or congealed Ability which is inherited in the form of Capital, as distinguished from the personal Ability by which Capital is utilised, we need not speak here, though we shall have to do so presently. For this inherited Capital would not only be useless in production, but would actually disappear and evaporate like a lump of camphor, if it were not constantly used, and, in being used, renewed, by that personal Ability which inherits it, and is inseparable from the living individual; and, though it will be necessary to consider Capital apart from this when we come to deal with the problem of distribution, all that we need consider when we are dealing with the problem of production is this personal Ability, which alone makes Capital live. [Sidenote ◆1 Who are practically the monopolists not only of their own special powers, but of the complicated discoveries of their predecessors.]