SKILL NOT A KIND OF GREATNESS 253 



do himself if he were performing their several tasks Book in 

 actually with his own hands. But a great poet let 

 us say Shakespeare could not in a similar way 

 so influence a thousand ordinary writers that they 

 should all of them be producing plays like Macbeth 

 or Hamlet. Indeed, the greater the poet is, the 

 more absolutely incommunicable is his gift. Shake- 

 speare may have so far contributed to progress as to 

 have aided in the development of literary English 

 generally, but he has not, in the course of some three 

 hundred years, brought into existence one dramatist 

 comparable to himself. 1 In art, in fact, after a 

 certain point has been passed, it can hardly be said 

 that there is any progress at all. 



It is still more important to observe that what is so are the most 

 true of the arts is also true of the crafts, or, in other worker" 

 words, those kinds of manual work whose special char- 

 acteristic is rare personal skill. Manual skill, though 

 essential to material progress no less than unskilled 

 labour is, does not, except during the earlier stages of 

 civilisation, itself constitute an actively progressive 

 principle. That is to say, at a very early stage 

 in the development of productive industry manual 

 skill reaches its utmost limits, and thenceforward re- 

 mains stationary, whilst industry continues to pro- 

 gress. Thus the skill which is evidenced by the 



1 Of course the great poet, like the great religious teacher, may 

 have an effect on the thoughts and imaginations of his readers, and 

 he may be a great man or an agent of progress in this way. But he 

 is not, in the technical sense of the word, a great man in reference to 

 his own art. He does not promote progress amongst other poets. 



