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qualification is necessary — since pain is correlative of new adaptations, 
pleasure of old and familiar ones, which lead through economy of 
material to degeneration — not improbably one of the most pleasurable 
of organic processes. This theory, then, will need considerable 
emendation before being serviceable as a basis for economics. 
§ 39. Conception of Value. — One of the latest and most nearly 
satisfactory analyses of the much-disputed and ambiguous term 
value ” is that of Jevons,* w'ho resolves it into three distinct 
factors : — “ (1) Value in use, or total utility ; (2) esteem, or urgency 
of desire for more, or final degree of utility ; (3) purchasing power, 
or ‘ ratio of exchange.^ ” Again, according to Walker, a commodity 
possesses value when it is an object of man’s desire, and can be 
obtained only by man’s efforts ; ” while Bastiat explains that 
value does not reside in the commodities themselves, and is no 
more to be found in a loaf of bread than in a diamond, the water, 
or the air.” And such definitions and exjdaiiations are repeated 
indefinitely in other works. 
But in terms of the present analysis it is evident that the “ value” 
of anything has a significance varying with the standpoint of each 
successive science, — that “ ratio of exchange ” expresses an essen- 
tially mathematical aspect, “ utility or intrinsic value ” its physical or 
physiological sense, intensity of desire ” its psychological, and 
^‘purchasing power” its sociological aspect. The long disputes 
respecting the nature of value are thus clearly analogous to the 
famous case of the gold and silver shield. From the psychological 
standpoint, for instance, the conception of intrinsic value is clearly 
irrelevant; and to economists of conventional academic training, 
acquainted with the current logic and metaphysics, but without a 
suspicion of physical and biological facts, the exclusion of every 
other point of view necessarily followed. From this point of view, 
especially when we bear in mind the idealistic philosophy of the 
schools, the dogma of Bastiat is a commonplace, and the thoughtless 
copying of it by equally pre-scientific writers is natural ; it has, 
however, no more interest to the economist than any other platitude 
of idealism : the facts for him being, as was above pointed out^ — (1) 
that loaf and diamond are observed to exchange in a certain ratio 
.(mathematical value) : (2) that they possess a certain number of 
* Math. Theory of Pol. Econ. 
