how riches are divided among those who vie with one another for their possession.
Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must create the wherewithal to satisfy them. But before producing anything, must you not feel the need of it ? Is it not necessity that first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land, to make implements, and later on to invent machinery? Is it not the study of needs that should govern production? It would therefore be quite as logical to begin by considering needs and afterwards to discuss the means of production in order to satisfy these needs.
This is precisely what we mean to do.
But as soon as we look at it from this point of view, Political Economy entirely changes its aspect. It ceases to be a simple description of facts, and becomes a science. We can define it as: The study of the needs of humanity, and the means of satisfying them with the least possible waste of human energy. Its true name should be, Physiology of Society. It constitutes a parallel science to the physiology of plants and animals, which also is the study of the needs of plants and animals, and the most advantageous ways of satisfying them. In the series of social sciences, the economy of human societies takes the place, occupied in the series of biological sciences by the physiology of organic bodies.
We say, here are human beings, united in a society. All feel the need of living in healthy
