This conception of capital, as a physically "abiding entity" constituted by the succession of productive goods that make up the industrial equipment, breaks down in Mr. Clark's own use of it when he comes (pp. 37-38) to speak of the mobility of capital; that is to say, so soon as he makes use of it. A single illustration of this will have to suffice, though there are several points in his argument where the frailty of the conception is patent enough. "The transfer of capital from one industry to another is a dynamic phenomenon which is later to be considered. What is here important is the fact that it is in the main accomplished without entailing transfers of capital-goods. An instrument wears itself out in one industry, and instead of being succeeded by a like instrument in the same industry, it is succeeded by one of a different kind which is used in a different branch of production" (p. 38),--illustrated on the preceding page by a shifting of investment from a whaling-ship to a cotton-mill. In all this it is plain that the "transfer of capital" contemplated is a shifting of investment, and that it is, as indeed Mr. Clark indicates, not a matter of the mechanical shifting of physical bodies from one industry to the other. To speak of a transfer of "capital" which does not involve a transfer of "capital-goods" is a contradiction of the main position, that "capital" is made up of "capital-goods." The continuum in which the "abiding entity" of capital resides is a continuity of ownership, not a physical fact. The continuity, in fact, is of an immaterial nature, a matter of legal rights, of contract, of purchase and sale. Just why this patent state of the case is overlooked, as it somewhat elaborately is, is not easily seen. But it is plain that, if the concept of capital were elaborated from observation of current business practice, it would be found that "capital" is a pecuniary fact, not a mechanical one; that it is an outcome of a valuation, depending immediately on the state of mind of the valuers; and that the specific marks of capital, by which it is distinguishable from other facts, are of an immaterial character. This would, of course, lead, directly, to the admission of intangible assets; and this, in turn, would upset the law of the "natural" remuneration of labor and capital to which Mr. Clark's argument looks forward from the start. It would also bring in the "unnatural" phenomena of monopoly as a normal outgrowth of business enterprise.