One begins to see that the centre of value is within us. It is only by association that we transfer to goods the “value” which we get through the consumption of them. We attach importance to goods only as we find that our life is incomplete or impossible without them. Thus water, air, etc., being, in their totality, conditions of our life, we attach value to them _as a whole_, and, indeed, speak of them as “infinitely valuable.” But we do not attach value to any individual portion of them, because, where there is enough to allow of waste, our lives are not _dependent_ on any individual portion. Thus it is that the theory of value lies at the basis of all economic theory. The only goods we “economise”—the goods which alone are objects of economic attention—are the goods which are insufficient, or just sufficient, to meet our wants. Contrasted with these are the “free gifts of nature,” meaning by the expression such things, adapted to man’s use, as are given us by nature in superfluous abundance. As goods which we economise, therefore, are the only goods which we recognise as _conditioning_ our satisfaction, we may say that, while all goods, by definition, have utility, only economic goods have value.[9] [9] In view of the loose way in which we use “economic” and “economise,” Menger’s definitions are worth remembering. When men recognise that their wellbeing is bound up with the command over certain goods within certain periods of time, and that such goods are likely to be insufficient for their demand, their impulse is (1) to get such goods into their possession or disposal; (2) to preserve the useful properties of the same; (3) to decide which are their more important and which their less important wants, and to satisfy the former only; and (4) to so dispose of the goods as to get the greatest possible result or satisfaction on the whole, and to obtain every individual result with the smallest possible expenditure. “The activity men direct to those ends, in its totality, we call their ‘economy,’ and the goods which stand in these quantitative relations, as the exclusive objects of that economy, we call ‘economic goods.’”—_Grundsätze_, chap. ii. § 3. CHAPTER IV THE SCALE OF VALUE