USEFUL THINGS. 495 



and, by cementation, it is converted into steel. The steel is wrought, 

 and a thousand things directly useful to man are produced. 



The utility of these last products increases in a direct ratio to the 

 amount of labor which men have expended. An anvil weighing a 

 thousand pounds is less useful than a thousand wrought files ; it costs 

 less labor. A thousand pounds' weight of files costs less labor than a 

 thousand pounds' weight of watch-springs ; they contain in themselves 

 a smaller sum of utility. You can easily understand that if the anvil 

 made in a day contained as much utility and was of as great value as 

 a ton of watch-springs, which it took several months to make, every- 

 body would prefer to forge anvils, and no one would weary himself in 

 flattening watch-springs. 



Neither a decree, nor a decision, nor a political law, has arranged 

 matters in this wise ; Nature herself has done it. 



It is necessary, indispensable, inevitable, that labor should con- 

 stantly augment the utility of things, and that men should buy them 

 at the price of greater efforts on learning that they are more useful. 

 Not only is the existence of utility merely relative to man, but it con- 

 tinually varies with our natural or artificial wants. 



A stove is useless at Senegal ; an ice-making machine is useless at 

 Spitzbergen. In a locksmith's eyes, pincers are objects of first neces- 

 sity ; a duchess has no use for them. Oil the other hand, a little bon- 

 net, which does not cover her head, is more useful to her than sixty 

 pairs of pincers, for she requires it to drive in her carriage in the 

 park, and she pays for it accordingly. The agreeable and the useful 

 are perpetually confounded in an advanced state of civilization : I 

 have explained why, in showing that our wants increase with our re- 

 sources. 



Time and distance augment or diminish .the utility of our goods. 

 A thing in your hand is of more use to you than if it were ten leagues 

 off. At the distance of ten leagues it is more useful than if it were in 

 America. The greater the distance, the greater is the labor required 

 to enjoy it ; you must either pay the cost of carriage or go for it your- 

 self. This fatigue and this outlay are equivalent to the labor that 

 must be expended, for instance, in order to convert iron into steel. A 

 thousand francs in Paris are worth more to a Parisian than a thousand 

 francs in Brussels ; a thousand francs in Brussels are worth more than 

 if they were in New York. In like manner a thousand francs which 

 are given you to-day are evidently of greater use than a thousand 

 francs which will be given to you ten years hence. A thousand francs 

 obtainable in ten years are more useful and are worth more than a 

 thousand francs of which the possession is postponed for fifty years. 

 The return may indeed be safe and certainly guaranteed ; the question 

 is utility as regards yourself, and you are not sure of living long 

 enough to enjoy a benefit so long deferred. 



The utility clearest to all eyes is that residing in material things. 



