CONSUMPTION 83 



It is a familiar fact of human experience that wants are indefi- 

 nitely numerous. Every day, in the consciousness of every normal 

 person, many wants for commodities and services are felt which must 

 of necessity go ungratified. Upon this simple fact is based the law 

 that the consuming power of a community is indefinitely great. A 

 second familiar characteristic of wants is that they are of very different 

 degrees of intensity. This is realized as soon as one tries to arrange 

 all the wants of which he is conscious in a scale according to their 

 importance. Such an endeavor reveals also the difficulty of measur- 

 ing wants and the complexity of those which direct daily life. Corre- 

 sponding to every want that comes within the scope of economics is 

 a utility or combination of utilities capable of gratifying it. The 

 intensities of wants determine degrees of utility and thus, as is shown 

 later, have great influence in fixing the values of the economic goods 

 in which utilities are embodied. Variable as they are in intensity, all 

 wants are subject to a law of gradual diminution and final satiety as 

 consumption is continued. Upon this psychological principle is 

 based an economic law of considerable importance, that of diminishing 

 utility. We may formulate it as follows: the utilities of additional 

 units of any good to any consumer diminish normally as his supply of 

 units of that good increases. This law assumes, of course, that no 

 change takes place in the character of the consumer as his supply is 

 being increased. 



The normal purpose of consumption is to afford pleasure. Since 

 each kind of good is subject to the law of diminishing utility, the 

 pleasures of consumption may be increased by attention to the law 

 of variety. If a man has only corn bread for breakfast, to satisfy his 

 hunger he must push his consumption of it beyond the point where 

 it affords him appreciable gratification. If to his corn bread are 

 added bacon, eggs, and coffee, he will be able to supply his body with 

 adequate nourishment without being obliged to eat corn bread after 

 he has ceased to relish it. Eating has been taken to illustrate the law 

 of variety because it is a universal experience, but the law applies 

 equally well to other forms of consumption. It is really a corollary 

 of the law of diminishing utility, since that law itself suggests the 

 necessity of passing from one form of consumption to another to 

 avoid the uncomfortable feeling of satiety. The ideal which the eco- 

 nomic man should, and does unconsciously, have in mind is that of 

 carrying each kind of consumption only to the point where it becomes 

 less pleasurable than another form of consumption that may be 

 enjoyed at the same expense. By changing to the new form of 



