ABSTRACT
In the field of economics the units had been, first, David Ricardo’s commodities and the individuals who produced commodities, while the “energy” was human labor. Then the units continued to be the same commodities, but the individuals became those who consumed commodities, and, at the hands of Karl Menger and W. S. Jevons, the “energy” became the stimuli of wants, depending upon the quantity and kind of the commodity. There was no need of a further correlation with law or ethics—in fact these latter were avowedly excluded, because the relations on which the economic units were constructed were relations between “man and nature” and not between “man and man.” The courts of law deal with human activity in its relation, not of man to nature, but of man to man. But they deal with this activity only at a certain point, the point of conflict of interests between plaintiff and defendant.
