◆¹ The second point I alluded to must be considered at greater length. In dealing with Capital and Ability, I first treated them separately. I then showed that, regarded as a productive agent, Capital _is_ Ability, and must be treated as identical with it. But it is necessary, now that we are dealing with distribution, to disunite them for a moment, and treat them separately once more. ◆² For even though it be admitted that Ability, working by means of Capital, produces, as it has been shown to do, nearly two-thirds of the national income, and though it be admitted further that a large portion of this product should go to those able men who are actively engaged in producing it,—the men whose Ability animates and vivifies Capital,—it may yet be urged that a portion of it which is very large indeed goes, as a fact, to men who do not exert themselves at all, or who, at any rate, do not exert themselves in the production of wealth. These men, it will be said, live not on the products of Ability, but on the interest of Capital which they have come accidentally to possess; ◆³ and it will be asked on what grounds Labour is interested in forbearing to touch the possessions of those who produce nothing? If it has added to its income, as it has done, during the past hundred years, why should it not now add to it much more rapidly, by appropriating what goes to this wholly non-productive class? To this question there are several answers. One is that a leisured class—a class whose exertions have no commercial value, or no value commensurate with the cost of its maintenance—is essential to the development of culture, of knowledge, of art, and of mental civilisation generally. But this is an answer which we need not dwell on here; for, whatever its force, it is foreign to our present purpose. We will confine ourselves solely to the material interests that are involved, and consider solely how the plunder of a class living on the interest of Capital would tend to affect the actual production of wealth. It would affect the production of wealth in just the same way as would a similar treatment of that class on whose active Ability production is directly dependent; and it would do this for the following reasons. [Sidenote ◆1 They are the heirs of Ability, and represent, by their possession of Capital, the main object with which that Capital was originally created.] [Sidenote ◆2 For Capital is created and saved in order that it may yield interest, firstly, to the man who himself created and saved it;]