This was the first mistake made by the older economists in the matter: it based “use-value” on a false or, at least, an unduly limited, conception of utility. The second—and more subtle—was in keeping no clear distinction between this utility and the so-called “use-value.” For want of this distinction, it was overlooked that, in the relation between wants and goods in which value emerges, the _supply_ of goods plays a part. Value emerges when a good becomes the condition of a satisfaction; it is conferred by the dependence of a _felt_ want, not of a _possible_ one. Hunger, for instance,—understanding by that the overmastering craving which puts all other feelings into the background—is not a felt want if food lies around like the manna on the Israelites’ plain. The nearer we get to making any object of want similar to a gift of nature, the less value has that object—not that its capability of use is any less, but that the abundance of supply has abolished the relation of _dependence_. A want never felt, would, of course, not be a want at all. But a trifling want unsupplied attains an importance for wellbeing which elevates it into a cause of value. Now, in the case of goods adapted to satisfy the necessary and universal wants of mankind, as no man can escape from these wants, there is always a large and steady market for these goods, and we call them “necessaries.” Wherever we have such a market in economic life, we may be sure that the brains of men and the resources of nature have been taxed to the utmost to make the supply abundant and cheap. Hence the tendency of economic progress is to assure the satisfaction of these fundamental and limited wants; in proportion as this is done, do men escape from that dependence which gives value: and thus many goods tend to come nearer to the free gifts of nature—their value falls and falls. The old theory, then, in taking hunger as the type of the most urgent want, was not dealing with wants, but with _possibilities_ of want. Want is, at bottom, a feeling of incompleteness. It may indicate something wanting to our physical organism which, if entirely unsupplied, will cause death. But if a few mouthfuls be sufficient to make this want disappear for the moment, and if there be no probability of these mouthfuls ever being absent, we have been too hasty in giving it the highest rank among human wants. To consider food as having the highest use value because the want of food means death, is like estimating the greatness of a danger by the loss of life which it might cause, without considering the precautions taken to prevent it: it reminds one of the schoolboy’s proposition, “Pins have saved many thousands of lives—By people not swallowing them.”