As Mr. Clark justly observes (p. 4), "The primitive and general facts concerning industry ... need to be known before the social facts can profitably be studied." In these early pages of the treatise, as in other works of its class, there is repeated reference to that more primitive and simple scheme of economic life out of which the modern complex scheme has developed, and it is repeatedly indicated that in order to an understanding of the play of forces in the more advanced stages of economic development and complication, it is necessary to apprehend these forces in their unsophisticated form as they work out in the simple scheme prevalent on the plane of primitive life. Indeed, to a reader not well acquainted with Mr. Clark's scope and method of economic theorising, these early pages would suggest that he is preparing for something in the way of a genetic study,--a study of economic institutions approached from the side of their origins. It looks as if the intended line of approach to the modern situation might be such as an evolutionist would choose, who would set out with showing what forces are at work in the primitive economic community, and then trace the cumulative growth and complication of these factors as they presently take form in the institutions of a later phase of the development. Such, however, is not Mr. Clark's intention. The effect of his recourse to "primitive life" is simply to throw into the foreground, in a highly unreal perspective, those features which lend themselves to interpretation in terms of the normalised competitive system. The best excuse that can be offered for these excursions into "primitive life" is that they have substantially nothing to do with the main argument of the book, being of the nature of harmless and graceful misinformation.