J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 169 



this is customary in industry. Hence this stricture. Its use hampers 

 analysis and clouds any presentation of the problems. For since there is 

 seldom only one way of doing a skilled job, the events occurring in the 

 bodies and minds of different performers will not be alike. 



Possibly, in some metaphysical sense, a job may exist when nobody 

 is doing it. Yet, especially since May 1, 1926, there is now little enthusiasm 

 for this type of industrial subjective idealism. 



To talk or write ebout the ' skilled job ' rather than the skilled man, 

 and about the ' skilled trade ' as if a trade were a unit, encourages un- 

 thinking people to believe (a) that work exists when it is not being done, 

 and (6) that this non-existent entity ' belongs ' to somebody. Both errors 

 are costly and stupid. 



Skill and Low-Grade Collections of Habits. 



Some so-called skills are a fortuitous concourse of habits. And 

 many of these are bad. Often no single habit in the number is well 

 adapted to the task, and the whole collection is only a makeshift, though 

 a makeshift for the whole life of its possessor. Contrast this with the 

 higher skills ; integrations, not mere collections of responses, and not 

 necessarily of habits only. Then to describe as skill some industrial 

 occupations, and some forms of domestic service in England, would be 

 flattery. 



One of the first analyses of skill was made by Mr. Frank B. Gilbreth. 

 Studying a bricklayer, he found that his eighteen movements in laying a 

 brick could be reduced to five. One may conclude, therefore, that the 

 original performance which he analysed could be called skilled only in the 

 popular sense. 



Skill, Capacity and Ability. 



Skill must be distinguished from capacity and ability. To possess a 

 delicately discriminative inner ear and muscles under perfect control is 

 to have capacity for musical performance. Obviously, such gifts may 

 exist in a person who as yet has shown no musical ability. For he proves 

 his ability to do a thing by doing it. Even by failing he does not neces- 

 sarily demonstrate his lack of capacity. For if untaught he usually will 

 have tried to do it in the wrong way. 



Skill is clearly ability, but ability to do a relatively complicated 

 series of actions easily and well. A man who can run need not be skilled 

 in running. But if he has learnt to move his legs well, to regulate his 

 breathing, to sprint at a particular point or moment, to estimate the time 

 in which it is wise to run a particular lap, to adapt himself to different 

 tracks, different lengths of race, different classes of competition, and 

 different competitors, he possesses skill in running races. 



Skill, therefore, implies discrimination of the situation and graduation 

 of the response. But to this should be added what I suggest as the 

 essential characteristic of^skill — ^the ability to integrate responses,^ and in 



^ Cf. the description and photographs of the modem skilled high-jumper in Prof. 

 A. V. Hill's Living Machinery, London, J 927, pp. 202 and 208. 



