of Edinhurgh, Session 1883-84. 
9G1 
the facts of production and consumption might actually have been 
reached by economic writers had they restricted themselves to these. 
Thus, even for the physical study of production while the import- 
ance of the necessary element is fundamental, that of the aesthetic 
is superior. In any at all civilised community, in short, every 
ultimate product has visibly superadded its cesthetic subfunction 
of visual stimulus, and (without trespassing in any way upon the 
province of aesthetic criticism by considering its quality) the 
physical economist must estimate the details and cost of production 
of each of these two elements respectively. And when we add up 
the aesthetic subfunctions of all “ necessary ” ultimate products, and 
add to this the vast quantity of purely aesthetic produets, we see 
how small the fundamental element of production has become in 
relation to the superior, and reach the paradoxical generalisation 
that production, though fundamentally for maintenance, is mainly 
for art. 
§ 22. Consumption . — Passing to the study of the disintegration 
and dissipation of energy which we term consumption, we find that 
this takes place at variable rates. What disappears per unit time 
as food, clothing, &c., is termed transitory, what remains is relatively 
permanent. As the unit time is extended from, day to year, and 
from year to generation and century, the transitory element of course 
increases at the expense of the permanent. And since the ultimate 
product newly produced -1- the store of permanent products consti- 
tute the quantity of wealth per given time, this is seen to be 
equally modifiable by the two independent variables of production 
and conservation. The old conceptions of domestic economy find 
here their place and use, and only require generalisation to be 
exhaustive. The term consumption is only fairly applicable to its 
transitory element, and should be superseded in its generalised 
sense by the homelier term of use. 
§ 23. Economy . — Passing to the most highly generalised concep- 
tion of use by extending space and time till we reach the synergy of 
the race (§ 20), the importance of the element of conservation becomes 
of ever- widening importance, for the accumulated wealth — and con- 
sequently the historic synergy — may be said to vary almost inversely 
as the transitory, and directly as the permanent elements of pro- 
duction. 
