In the second place it does not lend itself so readily to the separation of what is a purely statical mechanical product from what is a dynamical instrument of production, as does the symbol of the mechanical wheel. For just as a separate thumb and fore-finger are together more delicate instruments not only for the finer differences of touch and sensation, but for the better manipulation of objects as well, than if the two were welded together into a single conjoined organ or implement, so the image of an inner mechanical and dynamical wheel running in vacuo as it were, and on which products are launched to be carried around it in its revolutions, with a separate outer dynamical envelope surrounding it, where the instruments of production reside whose products are thrown on the wheel, is, like a revolving cylinder for the separation of substances of different specific gravities, a more delicate instrument for keeping unlike economic phenomena apart and for keeping like economic phenomena together, than is a biological organism, where although it is true that the purely mechanical and chemical products, as seen in the intake of food and its excretion, balance each other, - and are quite separable in thought from the vital organs of the body like the heart and stomach which do its dynamical functioning, - still the complexity is so great that it is difficult to separate them in detail.

And hence, in my judgment, the symbol of a bodily organism although it has a greater semblance of life, is not so good a symbol on which to work out the finer analytical processes of Political Economy and its laws, as is the symbol of a wheel. And lastly, when the problem becomes one of the economic relations between separate nations, its complications become much more difficult to unravel when these relations have to be represented in thought as between separate animal bodies, than when they are represented as between simple separate mechanical wheels with their environing motor powers, which can be connected or disconnected from each other by means of belts thrown across between them in all varieties of ways, - and where whole nations can by means of them be set to work, and made prosperous, on the one hand, or reduced to inaction and stagnation on the other, as the case may be. Besides, the symbol of the wheel, when the problem becomes one of trade between nations, will help us to separate out more clearly in thought the products that are complementary from those that are competitive, than will the symbol of the relation between animal organisms.

And although Mr. Hobson sees the circular nature of all the processes of Industry, the fact that in his discussion of the Free Trade problem he keeps his eye almost invariably fixed on what befalls the products of Industry of the trading nations concerned, rather than on what befalls their respective instruments of production (which like the engines in a factory are the dynamic motor powers from which all these products are derived) would seem to indicate that the symbol from which he deduces the law of the Science is rather that of a statical circle than of a dynamical running wheel; and this is why when developed from their respective symbols or germs, his system ends in Free Trade, while mine ends in Protection. And in this statical point of view he has had a tendency to be confirmed, I think, from having come to the Science from within itself as it were, as a specialism to be dissected and analyzed, while I have approached it from without and from the standpoint of general Civilization, of which the Applied Science itself is a dependency which is regulated and coerced by powers outside itself.

Besides, Mr. Hobson has consistently kept to a cosmopolitical and moral standpoint in discussing all international relations, whereas I have upheld throughout the purely national standpoint; the former being statical and ideal in its point of view, the latter dynamical, progressive, and following the methods and laws of Evolution.

And now in summing up this section of the history and evolution of the Science in the hands of its most prominent representatives, it is my conviction that were all the works of the orthodox Economists from Adam Smith down to the latest representatives of the academical Schools thrown overboard once and for all, and a fresh start made from the works of Mr. Gunton and Mr. Hobson, - as in Astronomy from Copernicus and Kepler, - the world of nations to whom the true solution of the problems of Political Economy, and especially that of Free Trade and Protection, is of the most pressing and vital importance, would be the better for it. For so long as the Universities of the world continue to turn out yearly thousands of young men, - many of whom in after life are to control its Council Chambers, its Parliaments, and its Press, - imbued with the principles either of the old orthodox Economy or the latest academical variations of it, the result must be in my judgment, and as the whole of this volume is a laboured attempt to prove, much the same as if the Technical Institutes and workshops of the world were to turn out a race of believers in the theory and practice of perpetual-motion.