ERROR OF MILD S ARGUMENT 



the patentees of the chain, we may be certain, Book in 

 will add their valuable testimony to the fact. So 

 with regard to running, Mill might fairly have said 

 that if we consider it in an abstract and general 

 sense, it is absurd to ask which contributes most to 

 "the effect " the ground or the man that runs on it, 

 because the first is as indispensable to the man's 

 movement as is the second. But if two men are 

 racing each other over the same course, and one 

 runs a mile whilst the other runs only half, it is 

 perfectly obvious that the extra speed of the winner 

 is contributed not by the ground, which for both 

 men is just the same, but by certain qualities in the 

 winner which the loser does not possess, or which 

 the winner possesses in larger measure than he. 



Now in all questions connected with progressive Mm errs by 



. , . i rr 1-11 i -i i th e 



social action the enects which have to be considered changing 



i rr i character of 



are not general enects, such as running at some the effect. 

 indeterminate speed, each of which effects is con- 

 sidered as being single of its kind, and which, in 

 consequence, cannot be compared with anything, 

 but effects each kind of which exhibits many com- 

 parable varieties, such as the running of several 

 men whose respective speeds are different. The 

 whole error of Mill's argument depends on his 

 failure to perceive this. He describes the result 

 of man's labour applied to land a result which we 

 have for convenience' sake expressed in terms of 

 loaves as "the effect." He says "nature and 

 labour are equally necessary for producing the effect 

 at all," as though the same amount of land and 



