ABSTRACT
We began by assuming the purchasing power of money and the existence of market prices, and analysed the principles on which we administer our pecuniary resources in the face of these phenomena. Our analysis has shewn us that we administer our pecuniary resources on the same principles as those on which we conduct our lives generally. It has also explained the phenomena of money, which we began by taking for granted, and it already foreshadows an explanation of market prices. In the course of our investigations we have discovered no special laws of the economic life, but we have gained a clearer idea of what that life is. It consists of all that complex of relations into which we enter with other people, and lend ourselves or our resources to the furtherance of their purposes, as an indirect means of furthering our own. This life is not isolated, but it may be studied in isolation, for the economic pressures tell for what they are worth whatever other pressures they combine with, and the better we understand them, as isolated, the better we can predict their effect upon any combination of forces into which they enter. To the social reformer this is of supreme consequence, for the economic forces are persistent and need no tending. If we can harness them they will pull for us without further trouble on our part, and if we undertake to oppose or control them we must count the cost.
