Seo. 2] CAPITAL 53

The railways of the country are capital; their services of
transportation or the dividends from the sale of that
transportation are the income they yield.
The distinction between capital and income is somewhat
analogous to the distinction between desirability and satvsfactions,
 which was emphasized in Chapter III; for desirability
 was shown to relate to a point of time and satisfactions
to a period of time.

§ 2

The foregoing definitions of capital and income are not,
it is true, universally accepted. Many authors attempt
to define capital, not as wealth in a particular aspect
 with reference to time, but as a particular kind or
species of wealth, or as wealth restricted to a particular
purpose; in short, as some specific part of wealth instead
of any or all of it. We are obliged, therefore, to pause a
moment to consider these opinions. In this chapter
we are concerned with the concept of capital only.
From the time of Adam Smith it has been asserted
by economists, though not usually by business men,
that only particular kinds of wealth could be capital, and
the burning question has been, What kinds? But the failure
 to agree on any dividing line between wealth which is
and wealth which is not capital, after a century and a half
of discussion, certainly suggests the suspicion that no
such line exists.! What Senior wrote seven decades ago
is true to-day: “Capital has been so variously defined,
that it may be doubtful whether it have any generally
received meaning.” ? In consequence, ‘almost every
year there appears some new attempt to settle the disputed
conception, but, unfortunately, no authoritative result
has as yet followed these attempts. On the contrary,

1 For a fuller statement than that which follows of the disagreements
 and confusions on this subject, see the writer's “ What is
Capital?” Economic Journal, December, 1896.
3 “Political Economy,” Encyclopedia M. etropolitana, Vol. VI, p. 153.