There are different degrees of productiveness in consumption also. Thus, to a scholar, his outlay for books in his own branch is immediately productive; but nevertheless, books in departments of literature very remote from his own, pleasure trips, etc. may serve as nutrition and as a stimulus to his mind. According to § 52, we are compelled to consider all consumption productive which constitutes a necessary means towards the satisfaction of a real economic want. We may, indeed, distinguish between productive consumption in aid of material goods, of personal goods and useful relations; but in estimating the productiveness of these different sorts of consumption we are concerned not so much with the nature of the consumption as the results in relation to the nation's wants. The powder that explodes when a powder magazine burns is consumed unproductively; but the powder shot away in war may be productively consumed just as that used to explode a mine may be unproductively consumed; for instance, when the war is a just and victorious one and the mining enterprise has failed.[211-3] The maintenance or support of those workmen whom they themselves acknowledge to be productive is presumably accounted productive consumption by all political economists. Why not, therefore, the cost of supporting and educating our children, who, it is to be hoped, will grow up later to be productive workmen. Man's labor-power is, doubtless, one of the greatest of all economic goods. But without the means of subsistence, it would die out in a few days. Hence we may, and even without an atomistic enumeration of the individual services and products of labor, consider the continued duration of that labor-power itself as the continued duration of the value of the consumed means of subsistence.[211-4] [Footnote 211-1: Even when air-dried bricks are made from water and clay which cost nothing; when purely occupatory work is done, and purely intellectual labor performed, some consumption of the means of subsistence by the workmen is always necessary.] [Footnote 211-2: Χρηματιστικαὶ in contradistinction to ἀναλωτικαὶ, according to _Plato_, De Rep., VIII, 559. Temporary consumption. (_Umpfenbach._)] [Footnote 211-3: _Storch_, Handbuch, II, 450.] [Footnote 211-4: Against the difference formerly usually assumed between productive and unproductive consumption, see _Jacob_, Grundsätze der Nat. Oek., II, 530. It is because of a too narrow view that _Hermann_ (II, Aufl., 311), instead of reproductive consumption, speaks of technic consumption.] SECTION CCXII. UNPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION.