UNCONSCIOUS VITAL PEOCESSES IN LIFE OF COMMUNITIES. 667 
of a man with a salary of £1,000 a year, and suppose that the 
income is paid to him in marked coins which can he identified in the 
hands of the persons to whom they come. This income (except so 
much of it as he hoards) will all become income of other persons — 
his landlord or perhapvS his mortgagee, his tradesmen, his medical 
adviser, his servants, and other persons from whom he obtains 
advantage or amenity. Their incomes will in the same way go to 
form part of the incomes of others from whom they obtain similar 
advantages. It would, I believe, be instructive, and I am sure it 
would be interesting, to trace the course of the flow of the 1,000 s 
sovereigns, and to find the number of persons of whose incomes they 
form part during a given period — perhaps of the same person more- 
than once — and how much the sum would come to of all the 
appearances of thoso same sovereigns. The number would not have- 
been increased, nor the share of the year’s produce of the community 
originally represented by them. But the investigation would show 
how the £1,000 worth of that produce which had fallen to the control 
of the individual for the purposes of consumption had been disposed 
of — how much consumed by himself, and how much distributed, and 
by what course of circulation, amongst other persons, and consumed 
by them. The whole £1,000 (except so much as was hoarded) would 
be found to have been applied in furnishing food, clothing, and shelter 
to members of the community. It -would be interesting also to 
investigate the stream of circulation of money from the other end, 
following it up to its sources. We should find, I think, in every case, 
that the actual consumer, except so far as he himself produces what 
he consumes, obtains liis share of the national income from some 
person who employs him and who himself procures it from some other 
person, and so on until we come back to the original producers. 
If there is a law regulating the flow of the material life-blood of 
a community, it is quite certain that any failure to obey that law will 
result in disturbance of the health of the body politic. When the 
body is healthy the supply of nutriment to every part of it is adequate* 
If, then, we find at any time that some members of the community 
suffer want or privation while others have enough, and perhaps to 
spare, the natural inference is. that some law of health has been 
violated, and either that the total supply of nutriment is insufficient or 
that the proper flow of circulation is obstructed. A knowledge of the 
laws of Nature in other branches of science has only been attained by 
the patient investigation of phenomena. I think it is not unreason- 
able to anticipate that a similar investigation of the phenomena, 
attending the operations of the unconscious vital processes of the bodv 
politic would be equally fruitful of results. Whether those results 
would come up to the expectations entertained by Mirabeau as to the 
effect of the application of Quesnay’s Tableau Economique I cannot* 
say, but there is at least ground for hoping that they would throw 
some light upon many social problems urgently demanding solution, 
and which seem sometimes to be involved in impenetrable darkness. 
