an illustration of the doctrine of Final Causes. Providence had so
ordered things that each man, by pursuing his own interests, pursued
the interests of all. To a later school it appears rather as an
illustration of the doctrine by which organisms are constructed through
the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. In either
case, it seems as though the mechanism were made rather for us than by
us; that it is the product of conditions which we cannot control,
instead of being an arrangement put together by conscious volitions.
And, therefore, when the economist shows us what in fact are the
existing arrangements and their mutual relations, he appears to be
making a discovery of a scientific fact as much as if he were
describing the anatomy of some newly-discovered animal or plant.

The real assumption of the economist therefore is, as I think, simply
the existence of a certain industrial organisation, which has a real
existence as much as an army or a church; and there is no reason why
his description should not be as accurate as the complexity of the
facts allows. He is giving us the anatomy of society considered as a
huge mechanism for producing and distributing wealth, and he makes an
abstraction only in the sense that he is considering one set of facts
at a time. The military writer would describe the constitution of an
army without going into the psychological or political conditions which
are of course implied, and without considering the soldiers in any
other relations than those implied in their military services. In the
same way, the economist describes the army of industry, and classifies
its constituent parts. In order to explain their mutual relations, he
has to make certain further assumptions, of which it would be rash to
attempt a precise summary. He assumes as a fact, what has of course
always been known, that scarcity implies dearness and plenty cheapness;
that commodities flow to the markets where they will fetch the highest
prices; that there is a certain gravitation towards equalisation of
profits among capitalists, and of wages among labourers; so that
capital or labour will flow towards the employments in which they will
secure the highest reward. He endeavours to give the greatest accuracy
to such formulae, of which nobody, so far as I know, denies a certain
approximate truth. So long as they hold good, his inferences, if
logically drawn, will also hold good. They take for granted ce