TALENTS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS 333 



different process from evoking by similar means Book iv 



faculties which are potential in everybody, and the 



supply of which can be increased indefinitely ; and The latter can 



i i 1 be increased 



it is a process, moreover, which produces very indefinitely, the 

 different results. Let us consider how this is. former not> 



For productive faculties of the highest order, For real pro - 

 which not only minister to progress, but initiate it, 

 and which make, as if by a conjuring trick, the hands room> 

 of the average labourer produce new commodities 

 of which he never would have dreamed himself for 

 faculties such as these, the demand is always un- 

 limited. There are productive faculties also, excep- 

 tional although they are inferior, the demand for 

 which is usually greater than the supply. But with 

 regard to those faculties or accomplishments which 

 are only exceptional accidentally, and which might 

 be, like reading, conceivably made universal, the 

 case is precisely opposite, and it is so for two reasons. 

 In the first place, these accomplishments, which 

 anybody might conceivably acquire knowledge of 

 French, for instance, or of book-keeping though 

 they may minister to the business of wealth-produc- but the 

 tion, yet have no tendency in themselves to make muuyTf C mere 

 the business grow. The number of persons, then, 

 possessing these accomplishments who at any given 

 time can put them to a productive use is limited by auction at the 

 the condition in which production at that time is. 

 Thus the number of clerks which a mercantile firm 

 can employ is limited by the business which the 

 firm happens to be doing ; and though this business 

 might be enlarged by the enterprise of one new 



