To sum up, then, we may say that the fluctuations of Interest or the value of Money, like that of the value of all other commodities that are put on the wheel to be ground into definite market-prices, is fixed by the relation between the quantity or rapidity with which the money is put on the wheel, and the quantity or rapidity with which it is taken off at the existing market-rate; - not on an ideal free-running wheel, but on one where modified monopoly powers, economic or legislative, make their entrance at every point and impede its movements, and so reduce the possible amount of wealth that is being constantly produced, consumed, and reproduced. But should a time ever arrive when it shall seem expedient and consistent with the broader and more important issues of national policy, that the nation should itself supply the capital required for industrial operations, instead of entrusting it to the private interests of special classes; then the bankers and money-lenders, as well as the industrial capitalists, would no longer be able to roll themselves up into modified monopolies fighting each for their own hand, but, as the Socialists so devoutly desire, would have their 'teeth drawn'; and Interest and Profits alike would cease, being merged in Wages and Salaries alone.

As for the ethical aspect of the problem; - we may sum it up by saying that if each individual is to receive what each has produced, then so far as either Rent, Profits, or Interest, are concerned, - all of which come from the gratuitous gifts of Nature - these should go in a descending hierarchy of rewards, first, to the Thinkers and Scientists who discover the laws of Nature; secondly, to the Inventors who turn these laws to account by the machinery and processes which they devise to capture and enchain the powers of Nature for the use of man; thirdly, to the great practical Organizers and entrepreneurs who can adapt these machines and processes most economically to their particular environments; and fourthly, to the Skilled Workmen without whose co-operation many of the surplus gifts of Nature would be but imperfectly utilized. These are they who have realized the myth of Prometheus and the fire which he drew down from Heaven as a free gift to man, - and not the merely idle rent-receivers, the do-nothing profit or interest dividers, or the miscellaneous herd of ordinary unskilled labourers, - and if it is a question of abstract economic ethics, it is to them that the bulk of the spoils of wealth should belong.

Now in the preceding volume of this series (History of Intellectual Development, Vol. III.), I have endeavoured to show that no merely abstract ethical ideal has any realized existence in the world of men, - any more than an abstract ideal love has, - but only a succession of concrete ethical ideals developed by evolution, in which the pure ideal is always mingled with elements of a baser strain; and this mixture of elements may be most compendiously summed up in the answer to the question; - what is the particular game that is being played at any given time by a given nation, and what are the accepted rules of that game? In Economics, the game is that of money-getting; and it is played on the basis of the family as the unit, and heredity as the mode of transmission of wealth, with force, power, custom, and precedence mixed, as its mainstays, and freedom of contract as its accepted method of play; but with the abstract ethical ideal in the background colouring all, and at all times, but only slowly gathering strength out of the clash of these warring forces so unlike in nature to the higher product which is to emerge from them.

But it needs little penetration to foresee that the industrial world will have to advance much nearer to the millennial time than it is to-day, before the hierarchy of wealth-distribution which I have indicated above, has any chance of realization.