◆¹ Now the question, let it be remembered, with which we are concerned ultimately, is how wealth, as produced in the modern world, may be distributed. Accordingly, since the distribution of it presupposes its production, and since we are agreed generally as to what the causes of its production are,—namely, Land, Capital, and Human Exertion,—our next great step is to inquire what proportion of the product is to be set down as due to each of these causes separately; for it is by this means only that we can see how and to what extent our social arrangements may be changed, without our production being diminished. And I cannot introduce the subject in a better way than by quoting the following passage from John Stuart Mill, in which he declares such an inquiry to be both meaningless and impossible to answer; for that it _can_ be answered, and that it is full of meaning, and that to ask and answer it is a practical and fundamental necessity, will be made all the plainer by the absurdity of Mill’s denial. [Sidenote ◆1 Mill declares this question to be meaningless;] [Sidenote ◆2 But his argument is answered, and is refuted both by practical life and by his own writings.] ◆¹ “Some writers,” he says, “have raised the question whether Nature (or, in the language of economics, Land) gives more assistance to Labour in one kind of industry or another, and have said that in some occupations Labour does most; in others, Nature most. In this, however, there seems much confusion of ideas. The part which Nature has in any work of man is indefinite and immeasurable. It is impossible to decide that in any one thing Nature does more than in any other. One cannot even say that Labour does less. Less Labour may be required; but if that which is required is absolutely indispensable, the result is just as much the product of Labour as of Nature. When two conditions are equally necessary for producing the effect at all, it is unmeaning to say that so much of it is produced by one and so much by the other. It is like attempting to decide which half of a pair of scissors has most to do with the act of cutting; or, which of the factors—five or six—has most to do with the production of thirty.” So writes Mill in the first chapter of his _Principles of Political Economy_; and if what he says is true with regard to Land and Labour (or, as we are calling it, Human Exertion), it is equally true with regard to Human Exertion and Capital; for without Human Exertion, Capital could produce nothing, and without Capital modern industry would be impossible: and thus, according to Mill’s argument, we cannot assign to either of them a specific portion of the product. ◆² But Mill’s argument is altogether unsound; and the actual facts of life, and a large part of Mill’s own book, little as he perceived that it was so, are virtually a complete refutation of it.