In all such cases--this was George's contention--we have some possession originally small to start with, which year by year is increased in amount or at least in value, not by the efforts of the possessor, but by the secret operations of nature.

Here, he argued, we have capital in its typical form; and interest is the gift of nature to the man by whom the capital is owned.
George, however, is constrained to supplement this proposition by another.

Though he assumes that of the products which are, in the modern world, actually paid as interest by the borrower of capital to the owners of it, the larger part consists of gifts of unaided nature, he admits that they are not the whole.

He admits that a part of it is paid for the use of machinery.

Now, such interest, he says, has a definitely different origin, and cannot intrinsically be justified in the same way; and if all wealth consisted of such commodities as are due to the efforts of man, and to the man-made machinery which assists him, all interest would be really, as it is said to be by some, indefensible.
But, he continues, since interest on capital such as machinery is not the whole of the interest paid in the modern world, but is only a minor part of it, and since in the modern world all forms of capital are interchangeable, the laws which govern us in our dealings with the lesser quantity must necessarily be assimilated to those which govern us in our dealings with the greater.