166 Professor Whewell on the 



result, even if the tendency of the original cause had been rightly 

 stated. In the postulate of price, it has already been noticed, 

 that the market price, determined by the immediate action of 

 demand and supply, may be very different from the natural 

 price, determined, according to the postulate, by the cost of pro- 

 duction : this latter price being however that under which the equi- 

 librium obtains, and to which the other perpetually bends. 



Supposing the preceding postulates true, the problems in which 

 they are applied are much simplified by assuming such an equili- 

 brium to obtain : but along with this simplification we incur a ne- 

 cessary and perpetual, and, it may be, a very considerable deviation 

 from the circumstances of actual fact. In reality, this equilibrium 

 is never attained: probably in most cases it is never approxi- 

 mated to. There is a constant tendency towards the state of 

 things in which the elements of wealth are in this exact balance, 

 but this is a tendency like that which the waters at the source 

 of a river have to descend towards its mouth. We cannot from 

 such a tendency infer that the whole course of a river is at 

 the same level; and just as little may we flatter ourselves that 

 we have solved the problem of the course and distribution of 

 the current of wealth, when we have combined the laws according 

 to which an exact balance might be produced. 



We are to recollect therefore, that even if our principles 

 were exact, deductions from them made according to the method 

 we are now following, would give us only a faint and distant 

 resemblance of the state of things produced by the perpetual 

 struggle and conflict of such principles with variable circum- 

 stances. Such deductions however would probably have some 

 resemblance, in the general outline of their results, to the true 

 state of things. They would offer to us a first approximation: 



