Sec. 3] CAPITAL 57

elements, “capital goods”; Knies,' the futurity of satisfactions;
 Jevons,® and Landry,’ specifically the time between
 the “investment” of the capital and its return.

§3
It is idle to attempt any reconciliation between concepts
of capital so conflicting, and yet there are elements of
truth in all. Though generally wrongly and narrowly
interpreted, there are certain recurrent ideas which are
entirely correct. The definitions concur in striving to express
 the important facts that capital is productive, that it
is antithetical to income, that it is a provision jor the future,
or that it is a reserve. But they assume that only a part of
all wealth can conform to these conditions. To the authors
of the definitions quoted, it would seem absurd to include all
wealth as capital, as there would be nothing left with which
to contrast it and by which to define it. And yet, as
Professor Marshall says, when one attempts to draw a
hard-and-fast line between wealth which is capital and
wealth which is not capital, he finds himself “on an inclined
 plane,” constantly tending, by being more liberal
in his interpretation of terms, to include more and more in
the term capital, until there is little or nothing left outside
of it. We are told, for instance, that capital is “wealth
for future use.” But “future” is an elastic term. As was
shown in Chapter II, all wealth is, strictly speaking, for
future use. It is impossible to push back its use into the
past; neither is it possible to confine it to the present.
The present is but an instant of time, and all use of wealth
requires some duration of time. A plateful of food, however
 hurriedly it is being eaten, is still for future use, though
the future is but the next few seconds; and if by “future”
we mean to exclude the “immediate future,” where is the

! Das Geld, 2d ed., 1885, pp. 69-70.
2 Theory of Political Economy, 3d ed., 1888, Chup. VII, pp. 222-242

8 I’ Intérét du Capital, Paris (Giard), 1904, p. 16.