50 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
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Of these six groups of questions, one is in its very nature 
static—the search for “natural” levels of prices, etc. Two are 
in their very nature dynamic—the study of “whence” and 
“whither,” and that of departures from the “natural” levels 
of things. These three between them constitute the more impar- 
tially descriptive section of the inquiry. The other three groups 
of questions are evaluative—the relation of economic quantities 
to utility and to human welfare, the theory of national efficiency 
and the justification of the underlying institutions. The more 
one considers these questions, the more is one convinced that in 
this realm dynamic considerations are paramount; until one may 
even doubt whether the questions have workable meaning apart 
from dynamic change. But the question of utility and welfare 
has received a static answer in the marginal utility theory; and 
the static economics colors the view of the other two questions, 
as we shall see. 
With Smith and Ricardo there was a loose and uncertain con- 
nection between the law of the natural level of price, on the one 
hand, and the three evaluative problems, on the other. Price did 
not measure utility; and while wages-cost was thought to be an 
approximate measure of labor’s sacrifices of production, even this 
idea did not stand the scrutiny which led to Mill’s statement that 
the hardest work is often the poorest paid, and to Cairnes’ theory 
of non-competing groups. Ricardo specifically separated “value” 
from “riches,” or the abundance of goods. So long as the search 
for “natural levels” of price and of the shares of distribution is in 
a rudimentary stage, and its premises not fully realised or 
expressed, it remains simply one out of a number of major prob- 
lems, each of which is dealt with in such terms as appear appro- 
priate. The static character of the one problem does not neces- 
sarily govern the treatment of the others. The comparative inde- 
pendence of the theory of value and the theories of welfare and of 
efficiency is a striking feature of the early classical economics. 
The early theory of institutions was static in a slightly differ- 
ent sense. They were taken for granted as natural, and even 
after Bentham dethroned this view, private property and con- 
tract were looked at as “unit characters,” so to speak: things 
with fixed characteristics, which might be wholly kept or wholly 
discarded in favor of public ownership or communism, and which 
were to be justified or condemned in toto. An evolutionary view,