To begin with the first division of the body social, the economic life:--This is grounded primarily in conditions of Nature,--just as the individual man starts with special qualities of mind and body as the basis for what he may be able to make of himself by study, education and the teaching of life. This nature-basis sets a unique stamp on economic life, and through economic life on the whole organism of society. It is there, this nature-basis, and no methods of social organisation, no manner of socialising measures, can affect it,--at least, not radically. One must accept this nature-basis as the groundwork of life for the body social,--just as, in educating an individual, one must take his natural qualities as groundwork,--how nature has endowed him in this or that respect, his mental and physical power. Every experiment in socialisation, every attempt at giving man's communal life an economic form, must take this nature-basis into account. At the bottom of all circulation of commodities, of all human labour, and of every form of spiritual life too, there lies something primal, elementary, basic, which links man to a bit of nature. The connection between a social organism and its nature-basis is a thing that has to be taken into consideration,--just as one has to consider an individual in regard to his personal endowment, when it is a question of his learning something.--This is most obvious in extreme cases. Take, for instance, those parts of the earth, where the banana affords man an easily accessible form of food. Here, it will be a question of the amount and kind of labour that must be expended to bring the banana from its place of origin to a convenient spot and deliver it ready for consumption; and this will enter into all considerations of men's communal life together. If one compares the human labour, that must be exerted to make the banana ready for human consumption, with the labour that must be exerted in Central Europe, say, to make wheat ready for consumption, it is at least three hundred times less for the banana than for the wheat. Of course that is an extreme case. But similar differences in proportion to the nature-basis exist between the amounts of labour that are requisite in the other branches of production represented in the various social communities of Europe. The differences are not so marked as in the case of bananas and wheat,--still, they exist. Accordingly, it is inherent to the body economic, that the amount of labour-power which man has to put into the economic process is proportionate to the nature-basis of his economic activities. Compare the wheat-yields alone:--In Germany, in districts of average fertility, the returns on wheat cultivation represent about a sevenfold to eightfold crop on the seed sewn; in Chile, the crop is twelvefold; in Northern Mexico, seventeenfold; in Peru, twenty fold. (See Jensen.)