The reason why labour, in this respect, differs from ability is as follows:  Whether directive ability shall or shall not exert itself depends upon human volitions which, according to circumstances, are alterable, just as it depends upon alterable human volitions whether a framework of steel be constructed in this way or in that; or whether a lamp be replenished with oil or no.  But whether ordinary manual labour shall or shall not exert itself, is not similarly dependent on human volition at all.  Let a nation be organised, no matter on what principles, the majority of the citizens will have to labour in any case.  The supposition of their labouring is bound up with the supposition of their existence.  To suppose that the labourers as a whole could permanently cease to labour, is like supposing that they could exist and yet permanently cease to breathe.  They can cease to labour for moments, just as for moments a man can hold his breath, as they do on the occasion of a strike; but they can do so for moments only.  Except in a region where climatic conditions are exceptional, what makes men labour is not an employing class, but nature.  Directive ability does not make them labour; it finds them labouring.  It finds them like wheels which are driven by an eternal stream, and which must turn and turn for ever, until they fall to pieces.  To inquire, then, what would happen if labour ceased to exert itself is like inquiring what would happen if the earth were to retard its diurnal motion, or if some natural force—­for example, that of gravitation—­were to strike work for the sake of intimidating the cause of all things.  Such suppositions are for practical purposes meaningless.  But with the directive ability of the few, as opposed to the directed labour of the many, the case is dramatically different.  For while there never can be any question of the directive faculties of the few being left alone in a world where there is no labour—­for in the case of the majority, nature, the eternal taskmaster, will always make labour compulsory, so long as stomachs want food and naked backs want clothing—­there constantly has been, and there may be again, a question of whether this mass of ordinary human labour shall find any exceptional ability so developed and so organised as to direct it.  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.