Financial Legislation and its Limitations. 65 



restitution of pure values might be looked upon as less objective 

 than one into a return of actual commodities. In one sense this 

 is true for it is patently a more psychological study than is the 

 latter case. It is no longer a question as to what articles are most 

 appropriate to include in the standard. The assumption is out 

 of court that they can replace the lost utilities. Now the inquiry 

 is shifted to general considerations of economic psychoJogy : 

 values of goods fluctuate in men's minds. The psychological 

 point of view predominantly involves investigation into typical 

 valuation; and that is justification for the term "idealistic." 



§ 2. A study of this sort is concerned with estimates reaching 

 into the future. What value will producers and consumers obtain 



.... 1 r 1-11 t) The ques- 



from commodities in the future as compared with the present.'' tion is partly 

 The inquiry involves, further, the methods of so expanding or f„t^u°* ^^''^^^^ 

 contracting the circulating medium at will that it command a of commodi- 

 correspondingly less or greater number of commodities per dollar one of express- 

 according as the value of commodities, taken dollarwise, has gone fyhig^aiuein 

 up or down. A rational solution is possible with the help of the commodities. 

 modern doctrine of value known as the " marginal " theory. 



A debt or deferred payment is presumably a contract for an 

 exchange of present against an equal amount of future utilities. 

 They must be equal to buyer and seller, separately : but the 

 estimates of the two parties are not necessarily comparable. 

 This hypothesis of enlightened foresight is the only possible 

 basis for a theory. The utilities themselves, unavoidably, are 

 objectively embodied in goods. The enjoyment and estimation 

 of utilities take place in the minds of the persons who are pro- 

 ducing or consuming them. The modern view of valuation 

 states, at the outset, that goods are primarily not estimated in the 

 market according to the efforts in producing them. Notwith- 

 standing all the elaboration of the doctrine of cost of production, 

 it is very likely true that it is, in many cases, much harder to find 

 the amount of labor or effort that has gone into producing a 

 given good than it is to measure the satisfaction which it affords. 

 The history of the former reaches back, perhaps for years, into 

 an account of the materials that were used to produce the 

 materials. Consequently, while the statement of the cost-of-pro- 



179 



