Let us state all the conditions necessary for the production of Utility, or of what is essential to the support, comfort, and pleasure of human life:--
The man thrown upon a desert island without accumulation,--the half-idiot boy who wandered into the German forests at so early an age that he forgot all the usages of mankind,--were each compelled to labour, and to labour unceasingly, to maintain existence. Even with an unbounded command of the spontaneous productions of nature, this condition is absolute. It applies to the inferior animals as well as to man. The bee wanders from flower to flower, but it is to labour for the honey. The sloth hangs upon the branches of a tree, but he labours till he has devoured all the leaves, and then climbs another tree. The condition of the support of animation is labour; and if the labour of all animals were miraculously suspended for a season, very short as compared with the duration of individual life, the reign of animated nature upon this globe would be at an end.
The second condition in the production of utility is,--
2. _That there shall be accumulation of former labour, or Capital._
Without accumulation, as we have seen, the condition of man is the lowest in the scale of animal existence. The reason is obvious. Man requires some accumulation to aid his natural powers of labouring; for he is not provided with instruments of labour to anything like the perfection in which they exist amongst the inferior animals. He wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the sharp bills, the solid mandibles that enable quadrupeds, and birds, and insects to secure their food, and to provide shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to admire and reverence the directing Providence which presides over such manifold contrivances. He must, therefore, to work profitably, accumulate instruments of work. But he must do more, even in the unsocial state, where he is at perfect liberty to direct his industry as he pleases, uncontrolled by the rights of other men. He must accumulate stores of covering and of shelter. He must have a hut and a bed of skins, which are all accumulations, or capital. He must, further, have a stock of food, which stock, being the most essential for human wants, is called _provisions_, or things provided. He would require this provision against the accidents which may occur to his own health, and the obstacles of weather, which may prevent him from fishing or hunting. The lowest savages have some stores. Many of the inferior animals display an equal care to provide for the exigencies of the future. But still, all such labour is extremely limited. When a man is occupied only in providing immediately for his own wants--doing everything for himself, consuming nothing but what he produces himself,--his labour must have a very narrow range. The supply of the lowest necessities of our nature can only be attended to, and these must be very ill supplied. The Moskito Indian had fish, and goats' flesh, and a rude hut, and a girdle of skins; and his power of obtaining this wealth was insured to him by the absence of other individuals who would have been his competitors for what the island spontaneously produced. Had other Indians landed in numbers on the island, and had each set about procuring everything for himself, as the active Moskito did, they would have soon approached the point of starvation; and then each would have begun to plunder from the other, unless they had found out the principle that would have given them all plenty. There wanted, then, another power to give the labour of the Indian a profitable direction, besides that of accumulation. It is a power which can only exist where man is social, as it is his nature to be;--and where the principles of civilization are in a certain degree developed. It is, indeed, the beginning and the end of all civilization. It is itself civilization, partial or complete. It is the last and the most important condition in the production of useful commodities,--