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 politics; 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 isin 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 
1 The Religion Worth Having, p. 55. 
2 Essays in Social Justice, ch. I. 
3 [bid., pp. 38, 40. 4 Ibid., pp. 41 f. 5 Tbid., p. 43. 
