MENTAL ENERGY. 635 



is maintained by the exchange of one form of service for another. The 

 measure of compensation is not the number of hours of labor put into 

 the product or service. The standard by which services are measured is 

 what the buyer is saved from doing, not what the seller does. Each of us 

 might possibly be able to house, clothe and feed ourselves if we were 

 cast upon an island possessing sufficient natural resources. If 

 a hundred persons representing all the classes in society were 

 wrecked upon such an island, each adult or each person above ten years 

 old would probably find a way to house, feed and clothe himself. Why 

 do we not house, feed and clothe ourselves, and why would not the 

 hundred representatives of different classes wrecked on an island each 

 do his own part of the work for himself only? Simply for the reason 

 that men are either endowed from birth with different aptitudes, or 

 different aptitudes are developed in their environment. Each one finds 

 out that by delegating to another certain kinds of work he saves his own 

 time and energy. Each one finds out what he can do for the next man, 

 while the next man finds out what he can do for him. 



There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or 

 estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or 

 manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another. 

 That unconscious cerebration affects the minds or habits or acts of both 

 parties in every purchase and sale. There may be errors in regard to 

 the service itself. The ignorant man will buy quack medicines that he 

 had better let alone, but what he pays under the false impression of 

 benefit to himself is his measure of what he hopes to save; while the 

 quack medicine vender, taking advantage of the ignorance of others, 

 filches from them the means of subsistence, even of wealth, under the 

 pretext of service. As time goes on, however, false measures of service 

 are eliminated with increasing intelligence, and true benefits constitute 

 more and more the vast proportion of the exchanges. 



The same ignorance which leads the masses of the people of every 

 country to submit to military dictation, even in a bad cause, also leads 

 to the wars of tariffs among nations by which prejudice and animosity 

 are kept up. The false conception that in international commerce 

 what one nation gains another must lose, is promoted by the advocates 

 of protection, many of whom very honestly believe that through the 

 exclusion of foreign goods domestic industry may be promoted, wholly 

 ignoring the fact that arts and industries are developed by intelligence 

 and not by legislation. 



The advocates of bounties and of special legislation also ignore the 

 fact that in this country, where mental energy is more nearly free in 

 its action than in any other, manufactures and the mechanic arts de- 

 velop in due proportion according to the age and the natural resources 

 of the territory or state, nine-tenths or more of the occupations which 



