In a more painstaking statement of this point of theory it would be necessary to note that these gains are "timeless," in the sense indicated, in so far as the enterprise from which they accrue is dissociated from the technological circumstances and processes of industry, and only in so far. Technological (industrial) procedure, being of the nature of physical causation, is subject to the time relation under which causal sequence runs. This is the basis of such discussions of capital and interest as those of Boehm-Bawerk, and of Fisher. But business traffic, as distinguished from the processes of industry, being not immediately concerned with the technological process, is also not immediately or uniformly subject to the time relation involved in the causal sequence of the technological process. Business traffic is subject to the time relation because and in so far as it depends upon and follows up the processes of production. The commonplace or old-fashioned business enterprise, the competitive system of investment in industrial business simply, commonly rests pretty directly on the due sequence of the industrial processes in which the investments of such enterprise are placed. Such enterprise, as conceived by the current theories of capital, does business at first hand in the industrial efficiency of the community, which is conditioned by the time relation of the causal sequence, and which is, indeed, in great measure a function of the time consumed in the technological processes. Therefore, the gains, as well as the transactions, of such enterprise are also commonly somewhat closely conditioned by the like time relation, and they typically emerge under the form of a per-cent. per time unit; that is to say, as a function of the lapse of time. Yet the business transactions themselves are not a matter of the lapse of time. Time is not of the essence of the case. The magnitude of a pecuniary transaction is not a function of the time consumed in concluding it, nor are the gains which accrue from the transaction. In business enterprise on the higher plane, which is here under inquiry, the relation of the transactions, and of their gains, to the consecution of the technological processes remotely underlying them is distant, loose, and uncertain, so that the time element here does not obtrude itself: rather, it somewhat obviously falls into abeyance, marking the degree of its remoteness. Yet this phase of business enterprise, like any other, of course takes place in time; and, it is also to be remarked, the volume of the traffic and the gains derived from it are, no doubt, somewhat closely conditioned in the long run by the time relation which dominates that technological (industrial) efficiency on which this enterprise, too, ultimately and indirectly rests and from which in the last resort its gains are finally drawn, however remotely and indirectly.