CLARK'S REFORMULATION OF THE CAPITAL CONCEPT 147 
ation principle”* and indicates what he thinks are its 
absurdities.” 
Professor Seager, a colleague of Clark’s at Columbia, acknowl- 
edges in the preface of his text his indebtedness to writers so far 
apart as Bohm-Bawerk, J. B. Clark and Alfred Marshall, and his 
treatment of this particular question betrays some of the dis- 
cordant results. He seems to accept both the old view and in 
part that of Clark. He defines capital as “the product of past 
industry used as aids to further production.”® Yet he cites, 
apparently with approval, the business man’s use of capital as 
“the complex of capital goods, used in connection with each 
branch of production, measured in terms of money,” * a valuation 
investment concept. But he does not, as did Clark, include land 
among “capital goods”; these are purely artificial things, 
“products of past industry,” ® thus plainly differing with the 
business usage cited. Seager was insistent on keeping sharply 
distinct the two classes of concrete goods (land and capital goods) 
which represent “man’s part in production and nature’s part.” ° 
Soon, however, Seager is found talking about buying land, quite 
in the sense in which the business man speaks of the purchase of 
other goods, as an “investment” involving the “capitalization of 
rents.” ” 
6. Marshall’s Eclectic Capital Concept 
In the first edition of his Principles (1890), Alfred Marshall 
was well aware of the issue before us, and gave it a good deal 
of attention. He showed acquaintance with J. B. Clark’s work 
of two years earlier,’ with Bohm-Bawerk, Newcomb,” and the 
several German economists above named, who contrasted capital 
* Idem., pp. 121-123. 
* In part his objections result from his not seeing the full import of the 
principle; however, his objection to Professor Irving Fisher's view of 
capitalizing human beings is in my judgment well taken. The reference 
to 4 text at this point in the 3rd edition (1921) is misleading. (Vol. 2, 
p. 126 
*® Introduction to Economics (1904), p. 108. 
§ Lent p. 126, and, in revised form, Principles of Economics (1913), 
p. 14. 
® Principles, p. 148. 
® Idem., p. 149. 
" Idem., p. 239. 
® E.g., note p. 615; and specific reference to Capital and its Earnings in 
note, p. 492. 
® Idem., p. 137.