Ske. 2] WEALTH 5 
Any single object of wealth is called an article of wealth, 
an item of wealth, or an instrument. The term ‘““instru- 
ment” is perhaps the most convenient. It appears to 
have been first employed by John Rae in 1834." 
§ 2 
Various classes of wealth may be distinguished. Wealth 
which consists of the earth’s surface is called land; any 
fixed structures upon it, land improvements; and the two 
together, constituting immovable wealth, real estate. 
All wealth which is movable (except man himself) we 
shall call commodities. A third group includes human beings 
— not only slaves who are owned by other human 
beings, but also freemen who are their own masters. 
It is true that freemen are not ordinarily counted as 
wealth; and, indeed, they are a very peculiar form of 
wealth, for various reasons: first, because they are not, 
like ordinary wealth, bought and sold; secondly, because 
the owner usually estimates his own importance so much 
more highly than any one else; and finally, because the 
owner and the thing owned in this case coincide. Yet 
they are, like other wealth, “material” and “owned.” 
These attributes, and others which depend on them, justify? 
the inclusion of man as wealth. But in order to concede as 
much as possible to popular usage, the following supple- 
mentary definition is framed: By wealth (in its more 
restricted sense) we mean material objects owned by man and 
external to the owner. This definition obviously includes 
slaves, but not freemen. But it is more difficult of appli- 
cation than the wider definition first given, as it requires 
! New Principles of Political Economy, recently reprinted under the 
title Sociological Theory of Capital, Macmillan, 1905. 
2 Among those writers who have included man in the category of 
wealth are Davenant, Petty, Canard, Say, McCulloch, Roscher, Witt- 
stein, Walras, Engel, Weiss, Dargun, Ofner, Nicholson, and Pareto.