are operative wherever men work at all. Every man who lives must have
something that can be called wealth, and, unless it is given to him,
he must do something in order to get it. A solitary hunter, living in
a cave, eating the flesh of animals and clothing himself in their
skins, would create wealth and use it; but he would not take part in a
social kind of industry. What he does could not be described as a bit
of "social," "national," or "political" economy. Yet the gaining of
his living would be an economic operation and would involve a creating
and using of wealth. A statement of the laws governing the processes
by which such a man makes the earth yield to him means of support and
comfort would constitute a Science of the Economy of Isolated Life,
which is a part of the general Science of Economics.

_Primitive Capital._--If an isolated man hunts with good implements,
he gets more game than he would have done if he had not used some of
his time in making such implements. It pays such a man to interrupt
his hunting long enough to make a spear or a bow and arrows. This
amounts to saying that it is an advantage to him to become, in a
simple way, a capitalist as well as a laborer; for the primitive
implements of the chase are forms of _productive_ wealth, or capital.
Moreover, if he possesses foresight, he will keep enough food within
reach to tide him over periods when game is not to be had, and such a
store is another form of capital.

_The Field of General Economics._--The economy of a man who works only
for himself is subject to laws that are based on his own nature and
the character of his material environment. Because he is what he is
and because nature is what it is there is a certain way in which he
must proceed, if he will live at all, and there are certain conditions
which must exist, if he is to live well. The inherent productive power
of labor and of capital is of vital concern to him, since he is both a
laborer and a capitalist; but he is in no way interested in what we
commonly call the relations of labor and capital, since that
expression always suggests the dealings of one class of men, who
labor, with another class, who own or control productive wealth. The
study of such relations takes us at once into the domain of _Social_
Economy; but we can study certain universal laws of wealth without at
all entering that domain. When we speak of the power that resides in a
bow and arrow, we refer to a truth of