tial principles on which
all rents and quasi-rents rest. It is best to study the applications
of these principles as they are made in a civilized state.

_Universal Economic Truths independent of the Special Facts of
Sociology._--This first division of economic science borrows none of
its premises from sociology, for the truths which compose it would
abide if there were no society in existence. Basic facts it takes from
Physics, Biology, Psychology, Chemistry, etc. Facts concerning man,
nature, and the relation between them are material for it, but
relations between man and man come into view only in the later
divisions. There, indeed, they do come into the very foreground with
results which immeasurably enrich the science. What we may call the
socialization of the economic process we shall have next before us,
and we shall find it full of critical problems involving the future
well-being of humanity. Industry is carried on by a social organism in
which men are atomic parts and to which nature has given a
constitution with laws of action and development. We have first to
study the nature of this industrial organism and the mode in which it
would act if it were not subject to any constitutional change; and
later we must study it in its process of growth. The economic action
of a society which is undergoing no organic changes is the subject of
Social Economic Statics, while such changes with their causes and
effects constitute the subject of the science of Social Economic
Dynamics.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOCIALIZATION OF INDUSTRY

We have now before us a few principles of so general a kind that they
apply to the economy of the most primitive state as well as to that of
the most advanced. It is not necessary that men should live in any
particular relation to each other, in order that, in creating and
consuming wealth, they should exemplify these principles. They would
do this even though they never came into touch with each other, but
lived, as best they could, each man on his solitary farm. Laws of this
general kind result from man's relation to nature, and not at all from
the relation of different men to each other. Let a man keep wholly
aloof from other men, apply his labor directly to nature, and he can
produce wealth of the various kinds that we have described. He can
secure food, clothing, and other things for his own use, and he can
make tools to help him in securing them. He will appraise the
consumers' goo