ources of enjoyment may be accumulated and stored up; enjoyment itself
cannot. The wealth of a country consists of the sum total of the
permanent sources of enjoyment, whether material or immaterial, contained
in it: and labour or expenditure which tends to augment or to keep up
these permanent sources, should, we conceive, be termed productive.

Labour which is employed for the purpose of directly affording
enjoyment, such as the labour of a performer on a musical instrument, we
term unproductive labour. Whatever is consumed by such a performer, we
consider as unproductively consumed: the accumulated total of the
sources of enjoyment which the nation possesses, is diminished by the
amount of what he has consumed: whereas, if it had been given to him in
exchange for his services in producing food or clothing, the total of
the permanent sources of enjoyment in the country might have been not
diminished but increased.

The performer on the musical instrument then is, so far as respects that
act, not a productive, but an unproductive labourer. But what shall we
say of the workman who made the musical instrument? He, most persons
would say, is a productive labourer; and with reason; because the
musical instrument is a permanent source of enjoyment, which does not
begin and end with the enjoying, and therefore admits of being
accumulated.

But the _skill_ of the musician is a permanent source of enjoyment, as
well as the instrument which he plays upon: and although skill is not a
material object, but a quality of an object, viz., of the hands and mind
of the performer; nevertheless skill possesses exchangeable value, is
acquired by labour and capital, and is capable of being stored and
accumulated. Skill, therefore, must be considered as wealth; and the
labour and funds employed in acquiring skill in anything tending to the
advantage or pleasure of mankind, must be considered to be productively
employed and expended.

The skill of a productive labourer is analogous to the machinery he
works with: neither of them is enjoyment, nor conduces directly to it,
but both conduce indirectly to it, and both in the same way. If a
spinning-jenny be wealth, the spinner's skill is also wealth. If the
mechanic who made the spinning-jenny laboured productively, the spinner
also laboured productively when he was learning his trade: and what they
both consumed was consumed productively, that is to say, its consumption
did not tend to dimi