to production. No production is possible without the co-operation of
all three.

We know that men once lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth,
just as other animals do. In that stage of existence a man was just
like the brutes. His existence was at the sport of Nature. He got what
he could by way of food, and ate what he could get, but he depended on
finding what Nature gave. He could wrest nothing from Nature; he could
make her produce nothing; and he had only his limbs with which to
appropriate what she offered. His existence was almost entirely
controlled by accident; he possessed no capital; he lived out of his
product, and production had only the two elements of land and labor of
appropriation. At the present time man is an intelligent animal. He
knows something of the laws of Nature; he can avail himself of what is
favorable, and avert what is unfavorable, in nature, to a certain
extent; he has narrowed the sphere of accident, and in some respects
reduced it to computations which lessen its importance; he can bring
the productive forces of Nature into service, and make them produce
food, clothing, and shelter. How has the change been brought about? The
answer is, By capital. If we can come to an understanding of what
capital is, and what a place it occupies in civilization, it will clear
up our ideas about a great many of these schemes and philosophies which
are put forward to criticise social arrangements, or as a basis of
proposed reforms.

The first beginnings of capital are lost in the obscurity which covers
all the germs of civilization. The more one comes to understand the
case of the primitive man, the more wonderful it seems that man ever
started on the road to civilization. Among the lower animals we find
some inchoate forms of capital, but from them to the lowest forms of