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 segregate him from the "cultural man," the "religious man," or the "military man," he is in fact only man utilizing economic means in pursuit of whatever "living" his inclination or chance leads him to. The catalytic agent of all human aspirations is production.

What, then, is production? It is the application of labor to the raw materials that nature provides for the making of things that satisfy human desires. Nothing can be produced in any other way. True, there are things men want that apparently do not involve the use of raw materials, things that are usually described as services. But even the singer needs sustenance, and the naked preacher might find the cold a hindrance to thought. There is no desirable service so far removed from basic production—like insurance or education—but that upon examination it does not turn out to be a subdivision or offshoot of the application of labor to raw materials. When you think of it, you realize that all the tangibles that men desire, like food and raiment, are congealed services, like cooking and designing, and therefore any distinction between goods and services, in an economic sense, is academic.

The fact that man is invariably dependent on raw materials for his living, even in the widest sense of living, stamps him as a "land animal." But, in that respect, every other animal is similarly circumscribed. So, the question arises, in what respect does the human being, whose social institutions concern us, differ from his food-grubbing neighbors? It is in the fact that he is not, like them, dependent on what he finds, but has the capacity of making use of nature to further his ends. This capacity we call reason, which is the faculty of extracting from a number of related phenomena a causative principle and of applying this principle in his business. For