goods, and any stock or plant in excess of this amount figures as waste forms of capital or over-supply. F then is the quantitative regulator of A, B, C, D, E.[163] Nor is the accuracy of this statement impaired by the speculative character of modern trade. Speculative merchants or manufacturers may set up business at D or C and provide themselves with stock and machinery to start with, but unless they meet or create a growing demand of consumers their capital is waste, or else if they succeed in getting trade it is at the expense of other members of the trade, and their capital is made productive by negativing the capital of other traders. § 11. The truth here insisted on, that an exact quantitative relation exists between the amount of stock and plant, severally and collectively, required at the different points A, B, C, D, E, and that the amount economically serviceable at each point is determined by the quantity of current consumption, would seem self-evident. But though this has never been explicitly denied, the important results following from its recognition have been obscured and befogged by several conceptions and phrases relating to capital which have found acceptance among English economists. Chief and foremost among these errors is the framing of a definition of capital so as to exclude the clear separation of productive goods and machinery, the economic means, from consumptive goods, the economic end. So long as a definition of capital is taken which includes any consumptive goods whatsoever, two results follow. One is a hopeless confusion in the commercial mind, for in commerce everything is capital which forms the stock or plant of a commercial firm, and nothing is capital which does not form part of such stock or plant. Secondly, to include under capital the food in the possession of productive labourers or any other consumptive goods is an abandonment of the idea of consumption as the economic end and a substitution of production.