UNCONSCIOUS VITAL PROCESSES IN LIEE OF COMMUNITIES. 665 
food, clothing, and shelter, and for increase, or else must be such that 
they can be profitably exchanged for the products of other countries 
which will be available for those purposes. 
4. Circulation in the body politic. It remains to consider the 
process, corresponding to the circulation of blood in the animal frame, 
by which the produce of the labour of the community is distributed 
in the form of food, clothing, and shelter to the several members of 
the community. I have already observed that, although every act in 
this process is done consciously by an intelligent person, the process 
considered as a whole is as automatic and unconscious as the work of 
bees in a hive, the individual actors looking only to the immediate 
result of their work. What arc the actual phenomena of this circula- 
tion and the laws that govern them ? 
This circulation must not be confounded with the circulation of 
money, which is quite a different thing. If we bear in mind that the 
real subject matter of the circulatory process consists, not of money, 
but of the products of the labour of the community or the things for 
which they have been exchanged, it will not be misleading, and it may 
be convenient for the present purpose, to treat the money which is 
used as the medium of circulation as identical with the things which it 
represents. 
We start then with a certain sum representing the annual produce 
of the labour of the community, and from which all expenses of the 
maintenance of all its members, productive and unproductive, and 
including the cost of government, are to be defrayed. If this fund is 
sufficient for its purpose, and if the process of circulation or distri- 
bution is effective, every member of the community should be supplied 
with a sufficiency of food, clothing, and shelter, and there should be 
something to spare for growth and accumulation. If, however, 
although the fund is sufficient, the process of circulation is ineffective, 
we may expect to find some parts of the body politic in a state of con- 
gestion or atrophy. It may, I think, he asserted with some confidence 
that this flow of circulation is governed by definite laws. Probably it 
takes place along the lines of least resistance. Probably there is in 
every healthy community a normal flow. The actual flow is certainly 
capable of being observed and investigated, and the laws governing it 
are probably open to discovery. I am not aware of any investigation 
of the subject from this point of view since the once celebrated Tableau 
JSconomique of Quesnay, the chief of the Physiocrats, which obtained 
such unbounded praise from the elder Mirabeau. The Tableau 
appears, however, to be lost, and I have not been able to meet with 
either of the books in which it was described in some detail. The 
course of circulation may vary according to the sources of the part of 
the fund from which it is specially derived. The sources of the 
income of communities certainly differ according to their local situation 
and circumstances, and the course of the flow of circulation will require 
separate investigation accordingly. The income of an Australian 
community is derived mainly from pastoral, agricultural, and mining 
industry, transport, and manufacture. The income of an individual is 
that part of the annual produce of the community which falls to his 
control for the purposes of consumption. In the case of persons who 
receive salaries or wages, or whose income is derived from investments, 
the whole income is practically at their own control for the purpose 
