The Economic Organisation. Among the complicated phenomena of social life, those institutions and arrangements by which man satisfies his material wants are perhaps the most important. The economic is the foundation of all social organisation. For until man is able to supply himself with the means of subsistence, it is idle to expect any development of the higher and more refined sides of civilisation. The economic wants must be satisfied before the higher intellectual and moral wants can be. And even after the development of civilisation, the particular form of economic institutions conditions and affects the whole social organisation. An industrial population will not have the same political forms of administration and the same policy as a nation composed of agriculturalists. The in?uence will, indeed, often extend to the more refined manifestations of civilisation, such as the artistic, the ethical, and the religious. For all study of institutions, therefore, it is necessary to know at least the general outline of the economic organisation.