The purpose of nature is not the purpose of man. Man only creates wealth by a perpetual effort against the purpose of nature, and the moment his effort ceases nature tends to drag back man’s creation from a condition where it is more to a condition where it is less useful to himself. For some sorts of wealth the process is very rapid, as, for instance, in the consumption of fuel, or in the wasting of ice on a hot day. Man with an expenditure of his energy and brains applied to natural forces, and by the use of capital, has caused ice to be present under conditions where nature meant there to be no ice--a hot summer’s day. He has brought it from a high, cold place far away; or he has kept it from the winter onwards stored in an ice house which he had to make and to which he had to transport it; or he has made it with engine power. But the force of nature is always ready to melt the ice when man’s effort ceases. The moment man’s effort ceases, deterioration, that is, _the consumption of the wealth present_, at once begins. And this truth applies at the other end of the scale. You may make a building of granite, but it will not last for ever. The consumption is exceedingly slow, but it is there all the same. And whether the consumption takes place in the service of man (as when fuel is burnt on a hearth) or by neglect (as when a derelict house decays) it is always _economic consumption_. We may sum up in the following Formulæ:-- 1. =Transport and Exchange, quite as much as actual work on the original material, form part of the Production of Wealth.= 2. =All Wealth is ultimately consumed: that is, matter having been transposed by man from a condition where it is less to a condition where it is more useful to himself, is dragged back from a condition where it is more to a condition where it is less useful to himself.= IV THE THREE PARTS INTO WHICH THE WEALTH PRODUCED NATURALLY DIVIDES ITSELF--RENT, INTEREST, SUBSISTENCE We now come to that part of Economics which has most effect upon human society, and the understanding of which is most essential to sound politics. It is not a difficult point to understand. The only difficulty is to keep in our minds a clear distinction between what is called economic law, that is, the necessary results of producing wealth, and the moral law, that is the matter of right and wrong in the distribution and use of wealth. Some people are so shocked by the fact that economic law is different from moral law that they try to deny economic law. Others are so annoyed by this lack of logic that they fall into the other error of thinking that economic law can override moral law. You have to be warned against both these errors before you begin to approach the subject of Rent, Profit and Subsistence. Only when we have worked out the principles of these three things can we come back again to the apparent clash between economic law and moral law, the understanding of which is so very important in England to-day.