963 
of Edinburgh, Session 1883 - 84 . 
§ 26. Ideal of Production . — We are called upon here to select 
between two alternative ideals, and without entering into any dis- 
cussion of optimism or pessimism, we are compelled as practical 
economists to ignore the second, which leads of course to the nega- 
tion of practical economics altogether. We have simply then to 
discuss the practical means of maximising production per unit time, 
though noting that every action in the community is ascertainahly 
of one or other tendency. 
§ 27. Production . — Starting from the estimate of the attainable 
sources of energy in nature, and from the scrutiny of the processes 
of technology and movement already outlined, our maxim leads 
directly to the organisation of production so as to maximise idtimate 
products. Inii^rovements in exploitation, increase in inanufactiiiing 
power, diminution of friction in transport, simplification of trade, 
are the four great heads of this process of which the endless details 
need not be here developed, especially as on the theory of conserva- 
tion of energy all are reducible to the same unit of measurement. 
With respect to organisms this involves (1) a maximisation of their 
usefulness for production in every possible way besides the corre 
spending increase in their numbers. 
§ 28. Consumption . — Passing to the maximisation of consumption 
per unit time, we see at once that this involves making all pro- 
ducts transitory; minimising similarly implies making all permanent;. 
Hence maximisation of permanent products has a reactionary 
diminutive effect on the producing population, just as the opposite — 
maximisation of transitory products — involves their indefinite in- 
crease. 
In other words, the physical economist, desiring to increase not the 
population, but the wealth of nations, — instead of simply approving 
the continuous development of the existing industries, and attempt- 
ing to increase average well-being by stimulatiug the exploitation, 
manufacture, or exchange, of the transitory products with which 
these mainly deal, — must advocate the proportional increase of per- 
manent ultimate products, and organise industrial processes towards 
that ideal. We have thus reached the new paradox (c/. § 21) that 
the sphere of practical physical economics is to discuss the ways and 
means of increasing not so much bread, as Art. 
