The "natural" system of free competition, or, as it was once called, "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty," is accordingly a phase of the development of the institution of capital; and its claim to immutable dominion is evidently as good as the like claim of any other phase of cultural growth. The equity, or "natural justice," claimed for it is evidently just and equitable only in so far as the conventions of ownership on which it rests continue to be a secure integral part of the institutional furniture of the community; that is to say, so long as these conventions are part and parcel of the habits of thought of the community; that is to say, so long as these things are currently held to be just and equitable. This normalised present, or "natural," state of Mr. Clark, is, as near as may be, Senior's "Natural State of Man,"--the hypothetically perfect competitive system; and economic theory consists in the definition and classification of the phenomena of economic life in terms of this hypothetical competitive system. Taken by itself, Mr. Clark's dealing with the past development might be passed over with slight comment, except for its negative significance, since it has no theoretical connection with the present, or even with the "natural" state in which the phenomena of economic life are assumed to arrange themselves in a stable, normal scheme. But his dealings with the future, and with the present in so far as the present situation is conceived to comprise "dynamic" factors, is of substantially the same kind. With Senior's "natural state of man" as the base-line of normality in things economic, questions of present and future development are treated as questions of departure from the normal, aberrations and excesses which the theory does not aim even to account for. What is offered in place of theoretical inquiry when these "positive perversions of the natural forces themselves" are taken up (_e.g._, in chapters xxii.-xxix.) is an exposition of the corrections that must be made to bring the situation back to the normal static state, and solicitous advice as to what measures are to be taken with a view to this beneficent end. The problem presented to Mr. Clark by the current phenomena of economic development is: how can it be stopped? or, failing that, how can it be guided and minimised? Nowhere is there a sustained inquiry into the dynamic character of the changes that have brought the present (deplorable) situation to pass, nor into the nature and trend of the forces at work in the development that is going forward in this situation. None of this is covered by Mr. Clark's use of the word "dynamic." All that it covers in the way of theory (chapters xii.-xxi.) is a speculative inquiry as to how the equilibrium reestablished itself when one or more of the quantities involved increases or decreases. Other than quantitive changes are not noticed, except as provocations to homiletic discourse.