RENT 
197 
But I have been rash, 1 fear, in using the 
word “ exactly ” in the last sentence. When 
we come to ask what “ rent ” really does 
mean in modern economics we very soon find 
ourselves in a mighty maze, not without a 
plan, but conforming to two or three over 
lapping plans. The best way to envisage 
it, for the purposes of such a study as is 
attempted in this book, is to rely on one plan, 
or at most two, and ignore the rest. 
To the two meanings of rent which will be 
noticed all that has been written in the 
paragraph above applies. The one meaning 
is payment for any things (or frequently it is 
limited to agents in production) of which the 
supplies are beyond human control. The 
other is payment for the differential advan 
tages between members of any class of such 
things, when differential advantages are 
understood to refer to the valuable properties 
inherent in things over and above those which 
are common to the class to which they belong, 
whether the differential advantages relate 
to land, persons or circumstances. Nothing 
much turns on the selection of the one idea 
or the other. To get rent in the first sense, 
we have simply to add on to rent in the second 
sense (which there is a certain convenience 
sometimes in calling “ differential rent ”)