In the earlier states of society no such ability was operative.

In savage communities it is not operative now; and there is constantly a question, among modern civilised nations, whenever the security of social institutions is threatened, of the action of this faculty being temporarily suspended altogether, either because those persons possessing it are deprived of the motives without which they will not exert it, or else because the labourers individually, on one ground or another, are impatient of submitting themselves to the direction of any intelligences but their own.
In other words, when we are seeking to measure the products due respectively to directive ability and to labour, by computing what would happen if either of these agencies were withdrawn, the withdrawal of one of them--that is to say, of ability--can alone be taken as possible by any practical reasoner.

We have before us practically two alternatives only.

One is a condition of things under which the exceptional ability of the few directs and co-ordinates the labour of the average many.

The other is a condition of things under which the labour of the average many has to exert itself with the same severe continuity, but is guided, co-ordinated, and stimulated by none of those special faculties which raise a few men above the general level of efficiency.