It may, however, be said—and the objection is worth noticing—that Capital is a material thing, and Ability a mental thing; and it may be asked how, except metaphorically, the one can be said to be the other? ◆¹ An answer may be given by the analogy of the mind and brain. So long as the mind inhabits and directs a human body, mind and matter are two sides of the same thing. It is only through the brain that mind has power over the muscles; and the brain is powerful only because it is the organ of the mind. Now Ability is to Capital what mind is to the brain; and, like mind and brain, the two terms may be used interchangeably. Capital is that through which the Ability of one set of men acts on the muscles—that is to say, the Labour—of another set, whether by setting Labour to produce machinery, or by so organising various multitudes of labourers that each multitude becomes a single machine in itself, or by settling or devising the uses to which these machines shall be put. [Sidenote ◆1 And this would be as true of Capital in a Socialistic State as in any other.] And it will be well, in case any Socialist should happen to read these pages, to point out that my insisting on this fact is no piece of special pleading on behalf of the private capitalist. ◆¹ The whole of the above argument would apply to Capital, no matter who owned it: individuals, or the community as a whole. For no matter who owned it, or who divided the proceeds of it, the entire control of it would have to be in the hands of Ability. In what, or how many, individuals Ability may be held to reside; how such individuals are best found, tested, and brought forward; and how their power over Capital may be best attained by them—whether as owners, or as borrowers, or as State officials,—is a totally different question, and is in this place beside the point. At present, it will be enough to sum up what we have seen thus far. The causes of wealth are not, as is commonly said, three: Land, Labour, and Capital. This analysis omits the most important cause altogether, and makes it impossible to explain, or even reason about, the phenomenon of industrial progress. The causes of wealth are four—Land, Labour, Capital, and Ability: the two first being the indispensable elements in the production of any wealth whatsoever; the fourth being the cause of all progress in production; and the third, as it now exists, being the creation of the fourth, and the means through; which it operates. These two last, as we shall see presently, may, except for special purposes, be treated as only one, and will be best included under the one term Ability. And now let us turn back to the condition of this country at the close of the last century, and the reader will see why, at the outset of the above inquiry, I fixed his attention on that particular period. CHAPTER VI