GROWTH. 129 



before. The trade of the huxter in ounces of tea and half- 

 pounds of sugar, is one similarly entailing much labour for 

 small returns. Beginning with a capital of a few pounds, it 

 is impossible for him to have a shop large enough, or goods 

 sufficiently abundant and various, to permit an extensive 

 business : he must be content with the half-pence and pence 

 which he makes by little sales to poor people ; and if, avoid- 

 ing bad debts, he is able by strict economy to accumulate 

 anything, it can be but a trifle. A large retail trader is 

 obliged to lay out much money in fitting up an adequate 

 establishment ; he must invest a still greater sum in stock ; 

 and he must have a further floating capital to meet the 

 charges that fall due before his returns come in. Setting 

 out, however, with means enough for these purposes, he is 

 able to make numerous and comparatively large sales ; and 

 so to got greater and more numerous increments of profit. 

 Similarly, to get returns in thousands, merchants and manu- 

 facturers must make their investments in tens of thousands. 

 In brief, the rate at which a man's wealth accumulates, is 

 measured by the surplus of income over expenditure ; and 

 this, save in exceptionably favourable cases, is determined by 

 the capital with which he begins business. Now ap- 



plying the analogy, we may trace in the transactions of an 

 organism, the same three ultimate elements. There is the 

 expenditure required for the obtainment and digestion of 

 food ; there is the gross return in the shape of nutriment as- 

 similated, or fit for assimilation ; and there is the difference 

 between this gross return of nutriment and the nutriment 

 that was used up in the labour of securing it — a diflTerence 

 which may be a profit or a loss. Clearly, however, a surplus 

 implies that the force expended is less than the force latent 

 in the assimilated food. Clearly, too, the increment of 

 growth is limited to the amount of this surplus of income 

 over expenditure ; so that large growth implies both that the 

 excess of nutrition over waste shall be relatively considerable, 

 and that the waste and nutrition shall be on extensive scales. 



