expressly admits also that mind is in some cases a more efficient
director than in others, and is able to train the hands and muscles of
the labourer, so that these acquire the quality which is commonly called
skill. Ruskin, who asserted, like Marx, that labour is the sole
producer, used in this respect a precisely similar argument. He defined
skill as faculty which exceptional powers of mind impart to the hands of
those by whom such powers are possessed, from the bricklayer who, in
virtue of mere alertness and patience, can lay in an hour more bricks
than his fellows, up to a Raphael, whose hands can paint a Madonna,
while another man's could hardly be trusted to distemper a wall evenly.

Now, in skill, as thus defined, we have doubtless a correct explanation
of how mere labour--the manual effort of the individual--may produce, in
the case of some men, goods whose value is great, and goods, in the case
of other men, whose value is comparatively small; and since some epochs
are more fertile in developed skill than others, an equal amount of
labour on the part of the same community may produce, in one century,
goods of greater aggregate value than it was able to produce in the
century that went before it. But these goods, whose superior value is
due to exceptional skill--or, as would commonly be said, to qualities of
superior craftsmanship--though they form some of the most coveted
articles of the wealth of the modern world, are not typical of it; and
from the point of view of the majority, they are the part of it which is
least important. The goods whose value is due to exceptional
craftsmanship--such as an illuminated manuscript, for example, or a vase
by Benvenuto Cellini--are always few in number, and can be possessed by
the few only. The distinctive feature of wealth-production in the modern
world, on the contrary, is the multiplication of goods relatively to the
number of the producers of them, and the consequent cheapening of each
article individually. The skill of the craftsman gives an exceptional