exact from each labourer conformity to the injunctions laid on him, in
respect both of the general character and the particular application of
his efforts. But in respect of the faculties distinctive of those
exceptional men by whom alone ordinary labour can be directed to the
best advantage, both these conditions are wanting. It is impossible to
tell that any man of ability possesses any exceptional faculties for
directing labour at all, unless he himself chooses to show them; and,
indeed, until circumstances supply him with some motive for showing
them, he may very well not be aware that he possesses such faculties
himself. Moreover, even if he gives the world some reason to suspect
their existence, the world at large will not know what he can do with
them, and will consequently be unable to impose on him any definite
task. A pressgang could have forced Columbus to labour as a common
seaman; but not all the population of Europe could have forced him to
discover a world beyond the Atlantic; for the mass of his
contemporaries, until his enterprise proved successful, obstinately
refused to believe that there was such a world to discover.

The men, therefore, on the exercise of whose directive ability the
productive efficiency of a modern nation depends, would occupy, with
regard to any nation organised on socialistic principles, a position
fundamentally different from that of the ordinary labourer. The exercise
of their distinctive powers, unlike those of the labourer, could never
be secured by coercion; because neither the nation at large, nor any
body of representatives, could possibly know that these powers existed
until the possessors of them chose to reveal the secret. They could not
be made to reveal it. They could only be induced to do so; and they
could only be induced to do so by a society which was so constituted as
to offer for an exceptional performance some exceptional reward, just as
a reward is offered for evidence against an unknown murderer. The reward