sumers' hands they produce a real income, in the
latter case consisting of the comforts and conveniences which attend
their consumption. But if this view be accepted all forms of wealth
must rank as capital; the distinction between those which have been
saved and those which have not loses all meaning; so long as a piece
of wealth which has been made exists, it has been saved, and is an
"investment" which will, at any rate in the satisfaction due to its
consumption, yield a real income. But this extension, though logically
defensible, must be rejected on grounds of convenience. When
economists can be got to recognise the necessity of measuring all
"incomes," as indeed all "outputs," in terms of human satisfaction and
effort, then it may be well to recognise that all forms of wealth
which have figured as producers' capital continue to exist as
consumers' capital, yielding an income of satisfaction until they are
consumed. To place the consumptive-goods on a common level with forms
of productive capital, it would of course be necessary to make the
usual provision against wear and tear and depreciation before
reckoning income. There would be no justification for reckoning the
total use of a coat worn out and not replaced as income from capital.

As matters now stand, the only logically accurate correlation of
economic activities which shall enable us to give a clear and separate
meaning to capital and labour-power involves the distinct recognition
of unproductive consumption--_i.e._, consumption considered as an end
and not as a means to further production of industrial wealth, as the
final object of economic activity. In other words, it is the benefit
or satisfaction arising from the destruction of forms of industrial
wealth that constitutes the economic goal. Life not work, unproductive
not productive consumption, must be regarded as the end. The
consideration that a good and wholesome human life is identified with
work, some of which will be industrial in character, so that many
forms of industrial wealth will be destroyed under conditions which
enable them to render direct service in creating new forms, does not
impair the validity of this conception. The inability of most economic
thinkers to clearly grasp and to impress on others the idea of the
industrial organism as a single "going concern," has arisen chiefly
from the circular reasoning involved in making "production" at once
the means and the end, and the inconsi