[Sidenote ◆1 But the Socialists have yet another fallacy with which they will attempt to neutralise the force of what has just been said.] [Sidenote ◆2 They will say that Ability is the creation of special opportunity, and that everybody at birth is potentially an able man.] ◆¹ But the socialistic theorist will not even yet have been silenced. Even if he is constrained to admit the truth of all that has just been said, we shall find that he still possesses in his arsenal of error another set of arguments by which he will endeavour to do away with its force. These are generally presented to us in mere loose rhetorical forms; but however loosely they may be expressed, they contain a distinct meaning, which I will endeavour to state as completely and as clearly as is possible. ◆² Put shortly, it is as follows. Though Ability and Labour may both be productive faculties, and though it may be allowed that the one is more productive than the other, it is on the whole a mere matter of social accident—a matter depending on station, fortune, and education—which faculty is exercised by this or that individual. Thus, though it may be allowed that a great painter and the man who stretches his canvas, or an inventor like Watt and the average mechanic who works for him, do, by the time that both are mature men, differ enormously in the comparative efficacy of their faculties, yet the difference is mainly due to circumstances posterior to their birth; that the circumstances which developed the higher faculties in one man might equally well have developed them in the other; and that the circumstances in question, even if only a few can profit by them, are really created by the joint action of the many. [Sidenote ◆1 This is sometimes expressed in saying that “the great man is made by his age,” i.e. by the opportunities others have secured for him.] [Sidenote ◆2 But this, though true psychologically, is absolutely false in the practical sphere of economics.]