If the cause of any good having value is that the satisfaction of some want is dependent upon it, the degree or amount of value must, one would imagine, be measured by the importance of the dependent want; that is to say, by the amount of wellbeing its satisfaction conditions. But here most people will hesitate. They would, probably, be willing to admit that utility is, in a general way, the cause of value, or, like Ricardo, that utility is “absolutely essential to exchangeable value.” But they are shaken in this belief when they remember that things which seem to be of great utility, like salt, are little valued, while things of little utility, like diamonds, are very highly valued, and are told that it is this contradiction which led to the distinction between “value in use” and “value in exchange”—practically to the abandonment of the former. We have here a heritage from our earlier economic science. Old classifications are more easily dismissed than got rid of; and it may not be wasted time to point out in this chapter how Adam Smith hopelessly confused utility and value by the introduction of the hermaphrodite “use-value.” We have already defined the economically Useful as that which is capable of satisfying the want of man. If utility, then, is relative to human want, it would seem that, before pronouncing on what has great and what has little utility, we must classify the various wants, and arrange them on some sort of scale. The familiar expression, however, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” might be taken as a text to show the difficulty of classifying wants. There are certain wants which require periodical or continuous satisfaction, such as the needs of food and warmth. These wants seem to tie us to the earth, and they keep us perpetually in mind of our physical limitations. However high we soar into the regions of spirit, hunger and cold bring us to earth again; and, if these wants are not satisfied, the animal nature asserts itself, and we are ready to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. Such wants, then, are fundamental and universal—instinctively we call them “needs.” But there are two very notable circumstances connected with them. One is that they are limited. More meat than the body requires clogs the wheels of life; more than a certain amount of clothes is a burden. The other is that these fundamental and limited wants are precisely the ones for which nature makes the most abundant provision. There must be many millions of people who have never known what hunger is except by hearsay, nor imagined the torturing cold of a night on the street.