INVENTION AND PRODUCTION 247 



has gone through three distinct stages: " The first stage is 

 struggle by destruction, that is private war; the second is 

 struggle by palaver, that is poHtics; the third is struggle by 

 production, that is economic competition." ^ 



Struggle for existence, according to our author, indicates 

 scarcity, for if all wants were satisfied there would be no scarcity. 

 Scarcity is thus relative.^ Its cause is attributed to the niggardli- 

 ness of nature, for the commodities that nature has supplied in 

 such abundance as to satisfy all man's wants have no economic 

 value. " The fact that there are human wants for whose satis- 

 faction nature does not provide in sufficient abundance, in other 

 words, the fact of scarcity signifies that man is, to that extent 

 at least, out of harmony with nature.'' This makes labor and 

 fatigue necessary which are, therefore, signs of mal-adaptation.^ 

 " That there is a deeper harmony hidden somewhere beneath 

 these glaring disharmonies is quite possible," — but this problem 

 is passed over to philosophy. The whole evolutionary process, he 

 holds, both passive and active, both biological and economic, is a 

 development away from less toward greater adaptation, from less 

 toward greater harmony between the species and its environment. 



Economic scarcity, according to our author, is the chief cause 

 of the disharmony between man and man, and in the conflict of 

 interests thus resulting we have the origin of the problem of evil.^ 

 " Fundamentally," we are told, " there are only two practical 

 problems imposed upon us. The one is industrial and the other 

 moral; the one has to do with the improvement of the relations 

 between man and nature, and the other with the relations be- 

 tween man and man." ^ 



As to the cause of economic scarcity, it is due primarily to the 

 indefinite expansion of human wants, and to the multiplication of 

 numbers, and for both man is in a large measure responsible. " It 

 would be difficult to find any question in the whole science of 

 jurisprudence, or of ethics, or politics, or any of the social sciences 

 for that matter," says our author, " which does not grow out of 



* The Religion Worth Having, p. 55. 



2 Essays in Social Justice, ch. II. 



' Ihid., pp. 38, 40. * Ihid., pp. 41 f. ^ Ibid., p. 43. 



