6 IV. G. Langworthy Taylor 



simple. As already noted, it is the fine distinctions that prevent 

 interference and allow rapid progress. It was supposed in the 

 static age that men used logic as a ground of action ; that men 

 acted upon conclusions drawn from premises. At present we 

 see that men adapt themselves to their environment by an organic 

 process and that reason is rather an effort to understand the en- 

 vironment and to complete the adaptation than the invention of 

 proper motives to action. The modern point of view, therefore, 

 does not connect reason with action so closely : it is less intensely 

 personal, and leaves the mind free for the apprehension of simul- 

 taneous variations in different items. 



A statement of some of the hypotheses of John Stuart Mill's 

 Political Economy will illustrate the nature of the assumptions 

 of static thought : 



i. Mill constantly accepts the popular conception of the wealth, 

 of the capital, and even of the source of wages in society as con- 

 stituting a definite fund. This conception has been found so 

 unreal by later thinkers that it has been abandoned in systematic 

 treatises. It exaggerates the importance of the conceptions of 

 wealth and capital relatively to that of income, and when applied 

 to wages, rent, and interest requires so much explanation and 

 qualification that the fundamental idea of a fund is lost and hence 

 comparatively useless. Nevertheless, for the youthful mind in the 

 static epoch, it is probably the only method of creating a vivid 

 self-consciousness on these economic topics. 



2. Mill supposes in some cases that capital may be instantane- 

 ously withdrawn from one industry and invested in another 

 without loss. In other cases, he supposes that capital is a fixed 

 amount, for example, when he treats of the injury done to 

 laborers by the adoption of machinery. 



3. He supposes labor and capital to act purely from selfish 

 motives. 



4. In his desire to reach fundamental principles, he considers 

 in many cases ultimate effects to the exclusion of immediate 

 effects ; but sometimes he pursues a contrary course. 



5. He speaks frequently in his masterly treatment of interna- 

 tional trade, of absolute wages and profits, as if any wages and 

 profits did not need to be accounted for. 



6 



