uch by the other. It is like attempting to
decide which of the factors five and six contributes most to the
production of thirty." And if this argument is true of nature and
labour, it is equally true of labour and the ability by which labour is
directed. Thus a great ocean liner which, in Mill's language, would be
"the effect," could not be produced at all without the labour of several
thousand labourers; and it is equally true that it could not be produced
at all unless the masters of various sciences, designers, inventors, and
organisers, directed the labour of the labourers in certain specific
ways. Both conditions, then, being "necessary for producing the effect
at all," the portions of it due to each would, according to Mill's
argument, be indeterminable. Let us consider, therefore, if Mill's
argument is sound. We shall find that it is vitiated by a fallacy which
will, as soon as we have perceived it, show us the way to the truth of
which we are now in search. Let us begin with taking the argument as he
himself applies it.

He brings it forward with special reference to agriculture, and aims it
at the contention of a certain school of economists that nature in
agriculture did more than in other industries. To urge this, says Mill,
is nonsense, for the simple reason that though nature in agriculture
does something, it is impossible to determine whether the something is
relatively much or little. Let us, he says in effect, take the products
of any farm, which we may for convenience' sake symbolise as so many
loaves; and it is obviously absurd to inquire which produces most of
them--the soil or the farm labourers. The soil without the labourers
would produce no loaves at all. The labourers would produce no loaves if
they had not the soil to work upon.

Now, if there were only one farm in the world, and one grade of labour,
and if every acre of this farm, when the same labour was applied to it,
would always yield the same amount of produce--let us say one
loaf--Mill's argument would be true. The actual state of the case is,
however, very different. Acres vary very greatly in quality; and if we
take four acres of varying degrees of fertility, to all of which is
applied the same amount of labour, then, while from the worst of the
acres this labour will elicit one loaf, it will elicit from the others,
let us say, according to their degrees of fertility, two loaves, three
loaves, and four loaves respectively. Here the la