CHAPTER I 



HOW TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN THE PARTS CON- 

 TRIBUTED TO A JOINT PRODUCT BY THE FEW 

 AND BY THE MANY. 



IN the first chapter of his Principles of Political Mil1 declares 



L l , that when two 



Economy Mill alludes to the question raised by agencies are 



. i /- / . i . essential to 



certain thinkers, 01 whether nature gives more producing an 



assistance to labour in one kind of industry than r 

 another"; and he endeavours to show that the 

 question is useless and unanswerable. In every discriminated. 

 industry, he says, there would be no product at all 

 unless nature gave something and labour did some- 

 thing. Each is "absolutely indispensable," and the 

 part played by each is consequently " indefinite 

 and incommensurable." " When two conditions" he 

 proceeds, ' ' 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 in the act of cutting, or 

 which of the factors five and six contributes most 

 to the production of thirty" If this argument is 

 applicable to nature and labour as agents in the 



