CAPITAL AND ABSTINENCE. 625 



What it really amounts to, then, and what was really 

 intended, is that accumulations are the result of abstinence ; 

 and I shall therefore henceforth so express it, dropping the 

 word "capital" altogether as expressing a needless limitation, 

 and sure to give rise to irrelevant discussions as to its 

 nature. 



2. As to " Abstinence." Difficulties have been suggested 

 to me as to the meaning of the term " Abstinence ; " but 

 these difficulties are not raised until it is found that if the 

 term is used in any ordinarily accepted sense, the proposition 

 in question falls to the ground, and therefore the term has to 

 be used in some mystical or figurative or technical sense, as 

 to the exact nature of which no one seems to feel very 

 certain. 



But the proposition that Capital (or, as I now put it, 

 Accumulation) is the result of Abstinence is put forward by 

 Mill and the economists as a self-evident truth needing no 

 demonstration, which implies that its terms are to be under- 

 stood in the ordinary sense ; for how can a proposition be 

 self-evident if its terms are mystical or technical, and the 

 mystical or technical meaning is not set forth <* 



The term may of course be made to mean anything. A 

 man who does anything may be said to abstain from not 

 doing it, but this is to expand away its meaning altogether, 

 for a word that means everything means nothing. The 

 word, I take it, is here meant in its ordinary every-day sense 

 as implying prudence and self-denial. Indeed, the words 

 " prudential " and " self-denying " are often expressly intro- 

 duced, and capital is said to be " the reward of self-denial," 

 which, as I have shown, if it is true of accumulations devoted 

 to production is equally true of accumulations devoted to 

 enjoyment. 



What we are to understand, then, by the proposition 

 before us is that any given product of the past continues to 

 exist in the present, because some one self-denyingly abstained 

 from consuming it (from actually using up and destroying 

 it), or else self-denyingly refrained from consuming something 

 else which was necessary to produce this. 



1 do not, of course, say that accumulations are never due 

 to self-denying abstinence of this sort, but my contention is 

 that such cases are few and insignificant in comparison with 

 the mass ; and that, speaking broadly, accumulations are due, 

 not to abstinence, but to a variety of causes, the three chief 

 of which are — 



