562 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 
economic pressures, of the sum of the industrial resources of a society amongst 
the objects that appeal to its members. 
A brief exposition will suffice. We have pointed out that to any individual 
the differential significance of a unit of supply of any commodity or service 
declines as the supply increases. In our own expenditure we find that current 
prices (our individual reaction on the market being insensible) fix the terms 
on which the various alternatives offered by the whole range of commodities 
and services in the circle of exchange are open to us. Obviously, if the 
differential satisfaction anticipated from one purchase exceeds that which the 
same money would procure from another, we shall take the preferable 
alternative, and shall so regulate our expanding or contracting supplies that the 
differential satisfactions gained or lost from a given small increase or 
decrease of expenditure upon any one of our different objects of interest will 
be identical. Into the practical difficulties that prevent our ever actually 
reaching this ideal equilibrium of expenditure I will not here enter; but I 
must call attention to the identity in principle of this analysis of the internal 
economy of our own choice between alternatives, tending to a_ subjective 
equilibrium between the differential significances of different supplies to the 
same person, and the corresponding analysis, given on a previous page, of the 
process by which an objective equilibrium is approached between the differential 
significances of the same supply to different persons. 
And this observation introduces another of extreme importance. In our 
private administration of resources we are concerned both with things that are 
and with things that are not in the circle of exchange, and the principle of 
distribution of resources is identical in both cases. The independent student 
who is apportioning his time and energy between pursuing his own line of 
research and keeping abreast of the literature of his subject is forming estimates 
of differential significances and is equating them to each other just as directly 
as the housewife who is hesitating between two stalls in the market; and, more 
generally, the inner core of our life problems and the gratification of all our 
ultimate desires (which are indeed inextricably interlaced with our command of 
exchangeable things, but are the ends to which the others are but means) obey 
the same all-permeating iaw. Virtue, wisdom, sagacity, prudence, success, 
imply different schemes of values, but they all submit to the law formulated by 
Aristotle with reference to virtue, and analysed by modern writers with 
reference to business, for they all consist in combining factors kar’ dp0by Adyor, 
in the right proportion, as fixed by that distribution of resources which estab- 
lishes the equilibrium of their differential significances in securing the object con- 
templated, whether that object be tranquillity of mind, the indulgence of an 
cvermastering passion or affection, the command of things and services in the 
circle of exchange, or a combination of all these, or of any other conceivable 
tactors of life. 
Now this dominating and universal principle of the distribution of 
resources, aS we have seen, tends, by the instrumentality of the market, to 
secure an identity in the relative positions of increments of all exchangeable 
things upon the scales of all the members of the community amongst whom 
they are distributed. For if, amongst the things he possesses, A. finds one 
a given decrement in which would make less difference to him, as measured 
in increments of other exchangeable things, than the corresponding increment 
would make to B. (who is assumed to have a certain command of exchangeable 
things in general), obviously there is a natural gain in B. giving for the increment 
in question what is less than worth it to him but more than worth it to A. 
There is equilibrium therefore only when a decrement in any man’s stock of any 
exchangeable thing would make more difference to him, as measured in other 
exchangeable things, than the corresponding increment (measured in the same 
terms) would make to anyone else. Hence all those who possess anything must, 
in equilibrium, value it more, differentially or incrementally, than anyone who 
does not possess it, provided that this latter does possess something, and pro- 
vided that ‘ value’ is measured in exchangeable things. 
But this last qualification is all-important. The market tends to establish 
an identity of the place of the differential value of any commodity amongst all 
exchangeable things on everybody’s scale of preferences, and further to secure 
that it is higher on the scale of everyone that has it than on the scale of anyone 
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