268 



NATURE 



[January 21, 1892 



The account of the few scraps of the leaves and stems 

 of the plants used by the pygmies to poison their arrow- 

 heads, and of those used as antidotes against these 

 poisons, which had been collected by Parke, is by Mr. 

 E. M. Holme, and is reprinted from the Pharmaceutical 

 Society of Great Britain's Journal. The poisons were 

 prepared from the bark of ErythrophlcEum guineense, 

 Don., from the leaves of probably Palisota bartcri, 

 Benth., from the bark and stem of the tips of the 

 young shoots of a thorny creeper, possibly belonging 

 to the genus Combretum, from the scrapings of the 

 bark of some unknown species of Strychnos, and lastly 

 from the seeds of the first-named tree. The antidote to 

 this poison-extract was prepared from the leaves and 

 young bark of three distinct plants, but the material 

 brought back by Dr. Parke was not sufficient to allow 

 of even a guess being made as to two of them, and 

 Prof. Oliver suggests that the third may belong to the 

 genus Unona. The illustrations throughout the volume 

 are feeble, if we except the two charming sketches by 

 Mrs. Stanley, and the view of Ruwenzori from a sketch 

 by Stairs ; but the rest of the illustrations are of the 

 ordinary make-up type that we do not nowadays expect 

 to find in a serious book of travels. 



THE A USTRIAN ECONOMISTS. 

 An Introduction to the Theory of Value. By William 

 Smart. (London : Macmillan and Co., 1891.) 



IT has recently become generally known to English 

 students of economics that a school of writers 

 •existed in Austria, who strenuously opposed the more 

 extreme views of the German historical school, and 

 devoted their attention to the study and improvement 

 of economic theory. By enabling a larger number of 

 English students to acquaint themselves with the writings 

 of the Austrian economists, Mr. Smart, who is Lecturer 

 on Political Economy in Oueen Margaret College, 

 Glasgow, has conferred on them no inconsiderable 

 service. He has already translated the acute and 

 instructive, though difficult and perhaps excessively 

 polemical, treatises of Dr. Bohm Bawerk, on the nature 

 of capital and of interest ; and now, in the little volume 

 before us, he introduces us to a theory of value "on the 

 lines of Menger, Wieser, and Bohm Bawerk." The theory, 

 he states in his preface, " is that enunciated by Menger 

 and Jevons, and worked out by Wieser and Bohm 

 Bawerk." It claims to give a more adequate explanation 

 of value than that formerly supplied in economic treatises. 

 It approaches the problem from the side of demand, 

 rather than, like Ricardo and his followers, from that of 

 supply. It declares that " value depends entirely on 

 utility," and that the kind of utility, which is all-important 

 in determining value, is "marginal utility." This con- 

 ception, which may be found in the pages of Jevons' 

 *' Theory," under the title of " final utility," has certainly 

 proved in his hands and in those of his English suc- 

 cessors, and his Continental forerunners like Gossen, 

 and contemporaries like Walras, to be a very suggestive 

 and fruitful conception ; and its discovery and exposition 

 may be fairly said to have revolutionized one side of the 

 problem of value — which is the central problem, so to 

 NO. I 160, VOL. 45] 



say, of economic study. The conception is more fully 

 elaborated and more sc'entificaliy expounded by the 

 distinguished writers who compose the Austrian school, 

 and Mr. Smart traces the outlines of their theory with 

 care and lucidity. 



Value, as he shows, may be subjective, or relative to the 

 well-being of a person, or objective, when it forms a 

 relation of power or capacity between one good and 

 another. The "valuable" and the "useful" are not 

 synonymous terms, but the latter is a larger class 

 including the former, where the useful is so limited as to 

 be the indispensable condition of satisfaction of a want. 

 The scale of value, accordingly, differs from a scale in 

 which wants are classified as " necessaries, comforts, and 

 luxuries"; for the "fundamental and limited wants of 

 life " are " precisely the ones for which Nature makes the 

 most abundant provision." It is the want which is least 

 urgent among the wants satisfied, which measures the 

 value of a good; in other words, it is its "marginal 

 utility." But we must be sure, in estimating this 

 marginal utility, that we know what is really the good we 

 are valuing. A good may be put, perhaps, to different 

 and distinct kinds of uses. The highest use will then 

 have the preference, and the " marginal utility" will only 

 be determined respectively along the distinct subordinate 

 I lines of the various uses. Or, again, many, and perhaps 

 most, goods are " complementary," in the sense that 

 several contribute to one satisfaction ; and the determina- 

 tion of their separate value becomes in consequence far 

 more .complex ; and, when we pass from subjective to 

 objective value, the complications increase in number and 

 variety, although one and the same fundamental law still 

 holds good. 



In this, and other similar ways, the Austrian eco- 

 nomists have undoubtedly succeeded in giving a more 

 scientific character and wider range to the conception 

 of final or marginal utility. But the question still remains, 

 whether they have fully solved the problem which they 

 have set themselves to determine. They will only allow 

 the older doctrine, which found an explanation of value 

 in " cost of production," to be regarded as strictly sub- 

 ordinate to the principle of "marginal utility." The 

 " causal connection," they maintain, runs from product to 

 cost, and not from cost to product. Consumption is the 

 final object and aim of production, and the side of demand 

 is more important than that of supply. And so it is 

 "marginal utility," which is the "universal and funda- 

 mental " law of value, and " cost of production " is a 

 " good secondary law as regards the vast majority of 

 goods produced " ; and it is so because goods of the 

 " second" and "higher orders," as they distinguish the 

 goods which are the means and materials of production 

 rather than the articles of immediate consumption, may 

 be employed in the production of more than one kind 

 of goods of the " first order." 



But it is doubtful whether the Austrian economists 

 have really grasped, in its fulness, the conception of cost 

 of production which was formed by Ricardo and his 

 followers ; and whether, by insisting on the exclusive 

 importance of " marginal utility," they are not giving us 

 a one-sided representation of the facts of the case. In 

 the eagerness with which they have seized and proclaimed 

 the new ideas, it is doubtful whether they have not unduly 



