Cicero wrote long ago: "Optimum et in privatis familiis et in republica vectigal est parsimonia." _Abstinence is the best means of revenue as well in private families as in the State._ The source of Capital in a distinct act of will saving or sparing from present use (_parsimonia_) a valuable commodity or credit, and the quick nature of Capital as adding to itself (_vectigal_) in profits, are both brought out in this Latin maxim, which is rather an expression of an old and ingrained Roman sentiment than anything original with Cicero. It is the very nature as well as the very name of "Capital" to increase itself by rapid increments. It is as well the Stream as the Source. For example, any sum of money soon doubles itself when put out at compound interest, because the original sum increases day and night until it be repaid. It is of the essence of every form of Capital _to make growth_, because its sole purpose as such is to become an aid to future and further production. A trowel in the hands of a mason, which is capital, pays for itself every day he works with it, and perhaps every hour of the day, in the increased production wrought by means of it. The wheel, which free water turns, though a costly implement, repays that cost a hundred fold in the additional bushels of wheat turned into flour through its aid as capital. So of all implements. So of all machinery. So of all means of transportation: ships, canals, railroads. There was a strange prejudice in ancient and mediæval times against this natural increase of capital out of its own bowels, as it were, owing probably to this dictum of Aristotle: "_For usury is most reasonably detested, as the increase of our fortune arises from the money itself, and not by employing it for the purpose for which it was intended._" In 1360, a French bishop, Nicole Oresme, repeats the error of Aristotle under the same rhetorical image: "_It is monstrous and contrary to Nature that a barren stock should give birth, that a thing sterile in its whole being should fructify and be multiplied from itself, and such a thing is money._" Even Shakspeare catches up the old figure: "_Is your gold and silver ewes and rams?_" Shylock answers: "_I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast._" In the light of the three requisites of Production, in the light of the purpose and wisdom of God in arranging the active forces of this world, the prejudice in question disappears, and intelligence rejoices in the ever-increasing use of Capital as the handmaid of Labor, in the quick and sure reward of him who practises abstinence, in the production of commodities constantly made easier and cheaper in all directions, in a scale of comforts for the masses of men assuredly rising, in a divinely appointed force lifting like Christianity itself upon the otherwise sagging condition of mankind.