[61] Mr. Shaw, for instance, is at much pains to point out that Ability is not one definite thing, as the power of jumping is, and makes himself merry by asking if Wellington’s Ability could be compared with Cobden’s, or Napoleon’s with Beethoven’s. This is all beside the mark. I have been careful to define the sense in which I used the word Ability—to define it with the utmost exactness. I have said that I use it as meaning productive Ability—industrial Ability. That is to say, those faculties by which men, not labouring themselves, are capable of directing to the best advantage the labour of others, with a view to the production of economic commodities. In the Middle Ages I said that another kind of Ability was more important—_i.e._ Military Ability, instead of Economic; and the historical importance of this fact, which Mr. Shaw says I discovered only after I had written my first article on Fabian Economics, I insisted on, at much greater length, years ago, when criticising Karl Marx’s “Theory of Value,” in this [the Fortnightly] Review. Again, let Mr. Shaw turn to _Labour and the Popular Welfare_, p. 328, and he will find what he says put more clearly by myself than by him. [62] It is interesting to see the analysis which Mr. Shaw gives of the elements which make up the _five hundred million pounds_ (see page 482 of his article). It shows a curious want of sense of proportion, and reads much like a statement that a young man’s bankruptcy was due to the _one hundred thousand pounds_ he has spent on the turf, the _fifty thousand pounds_ he had spent on building a house, the _fifty pounds_ he has spent on a fur coat, and the sixpence he gave last Saturday to the porter at Paddington Station. But there is in it a more serious error than this. Mr. Shaw says, and rightly, that a large part of the millions to which he alludes consists of payments to artists and other professional men (_e.g._ doctors), by very rich commonplace people competing for their services. But he entirely mistakes the meaning of this fact. I have pointed it out carefully in _Labour and the Popular Welfare_ (Book I. chap. iii.) and have illustrated it by one of the exact cases Mr. Shaw has in view, viz. that of a doctor who gets a fee of _one thousand two hundred pounds_ from “a very rich commonplace person.” I pointed out that in the estimates, from which Mr. Shaw gets his figures of _five hundred million pounds_, all such payments are counted twice over. The “very rich commonplace person” and the doctor both pay income-tax on and are regarded as possessing the same _one thousand two hundred pounds_. As matters stand this is right enough, for the patient receives either in good or fancied good an equivalent for his fee in the doctor’s services; but if the sum in question were to be divided up and distributed, there would for distribution be one _one thousand two hundred pounds_ only. By reference to calculations