industrial process they made no attempt to explain, otherwise than by
comprehending them on occasion under the common name of labour, which
they assigned throughout most of their arguments to manual task-work
only.

Now, it is doubtless true that, as a mere matter of verbal propriety,
this general sense may be given to the word "labour," if we please; but
if in discussing the efforts which produce wealth we admit that these
efforts are not of one kind but two, and if the word "labour" is, in
nine cases out of ten, employed with the definite intention of
designating only one of them, it is impossible to reason about the
industrial process intelligibly, so long as we apply also the same name
to the other. We might as well use the word "man"--as with reference to
some problems we are perfectly right in doing--to designate both men and
women, and then attempt to discuss the relations between the two sexes.

For the directive faculties, so essentially distinct from those to which
universal custom has allocated the name of labour, it is difficult to
find a name equally convenient and satisfying. In default of a better, I
have, on former occasions, applied to it the name of Ability; and this
will serve our purpose here--especially as it is a name which has been,
of recent years, applied by many of the more thoughtful socialists
themselves to certain activities of a mental and moral kind, which their
conception of labour cannot be made to include, but which they are
beginning to recognise as playing some part in production. We must
remember, however, that we are using it in a strictly technical sense,
which will in some respects be narrower than the ordinary, and in some
more comprehensive. It will exclude all kinds of cleverness unapplied
to economic production; and will include many powers, in so far as such
production is affected by them, to the expression of whose scope and