202 ARISTOCRACY AND EVOLUTION 



Book in labour must always result in the production of the 

 same number of loaves. To conceive and speak 

 of the matter in this way is to ignore entirely all 

 the phenomena of progress all the phenomena 

 which differentiate civilisation from savagery, and 

 which it is the special function of economics and 

 of sociology to explain. Rent, for example, the 

 theory of which Mill states with extreme lucidity, 

 and insists upon with the utmost emphasis, arises 

 from the fact that one man and one acre of land, 

 The case of instead of producing something that can be described 



labour directed .. . .. 



by different generally as the enect, produce in different cases 

 effects that are widely different ten loaves when 

 t ^ le acre * s Da< ^' twenty loaves when the acre is good : 



to different anc j m a similar way, when the acres are of the 



qualities of J 



land. The same quality, twenty loaves will be produced by an 



great men pro- ..... . . . , , , , ...... 



duce the in- acre if it is cultivated by the methods 01 civilisation, 

 and only ten by an acre if it is cultivated by the 

 methods of a savage. Now, just as agricultural rent 

 arises from different qualities in the soil, so does 

 agricultural progress arise from differences in the 

 powers of the men. It is measured by, and it consists 

 of, not "the effect," but a series of effects, similar 

 indeed in kind, but continually increasing in degree ; 

 and it is their differences in degree, not their 

 similarity in kind, that form for the economist the 

 particular subject to be considered. 



And what is true in this respect of production 

 and progress in agriculture is equally true of pro- 

 duction and progress generally. The former indeed 

 are the simplest type of the latter, just as they are 



