46 IV. G. Langu'orthy Taylor 



keep right on with our method and record the contemporaneous- 

 ness of the several fluctuations, — whether much of this or little 

 of that is present. A point, however, has been reached where 

 motion is becoming the important element, and where its direc- 

 tion can best be pursued as a separate, and, in fact, the principal 

 theme. We are now prepared to understand the business man's 

 point of view. In the quasi-physical sense, we want to know 

 what invention, what business, what enterprise gave the first 

 impulse to prosperity, what was the next one to receive it, the 

 next, and so on throughout the entire list. The need of cata- 

 loguing businesses in the order in which they are affected by 

 expansion of trade and by "crises" is felt by those who are study- 

 ing crisis phenomena,, and the present analysis is conducive to 

 the setting of this desideratum in its proper relation to the rest 

 of the complete crisis theory. 



The industrial movement of expansion does not, however, act 

 in this quasi-physical manner of causation alone. There is, to 

 be sure, an appearance of stimulus, when one card sets another 

 atumbling and so the whole house of cards falls. A stimulus is 

 that which disturbs an equilibrium ; and the more unstable and 

 nicely poised be the equilibrium, so much the less ponderable and 

 hence less physical need be the disturbing force. Consequently, 

 the more the phenomena of industry are those implicating func- 

 tional motion, and the more nicely poised they are for the play 

 of such motion, so much the more are they obnoxious to indus- 

 trial influences of a more purely psychic order. In fact, in 

 organisms, the term "stimulus" is chiefly restricted to the nervous 

 impulses. It is supposed that nerve action always regulates the 

 coordination of the brain, the circulation, the digestion ; they are 

 not set at work by mere physical impact. Their particles are in 

 such unstable equilibrium that a nerve current suffices to set them 

 in motion. The steam in the boiler may be liberated to do its 

 mighty work by a tiny electric impulse. It is highly significant 

 that nerve action has been discovered by Professor Loeb to be 

 essentially electric. 



According to some popular theorists, 1 there is something of 

 magic in money. The possession of money has seemed to be the 

 a F. Tugan-Baronowsky, Handelskrisen in England, p. 7, sqq. 



46 



