To sum up. In assuming that bread and water had a higher “use-value” than iron, iron than gold, gold than diamonds, the earlier economists evidently referred to a theoretical scale of wants which is not recognised by any man as _his_ scale; and, as they could not ignore the fact that practical men, in making their valuations, seemed to put diamonds above gold, gold above iron, and iron above bread, they had to divide off their so-called “use-value” sharply from the value which ruled the economical transactions of the world, and to call the latter “exchange value.” The modern economist says that the phenomenon of bread possessing little value and diamonds much value, is not in contradiction with the theory that value depends entirely on utility. Bread is little thought of, and diamonds much thought of, because, when all the circumstances are taken into account—the circumstance of limitation of want and the circumstance of provision for want—the importance to concrete human want of the one is little, and of the other is much. NOTE The Austrian writers, whose economics are strongly coloured by the utilitarian psychology, usually put the matter in the following way. The course of the satisfaction of a want may be represented by a diminishing scale. Of most wants, material and intellectual alike, it is true that the pleasure got from the first draught of satisfaction is the keenest. The complete satisfaction, then, of any want might be represented by a graduated scale diminishing to zero—beyond zero, the satisfaction turning into satiety and disgust. If we combine this scale with the other alluded to in the text—that which has the negative sanction of loss of wellbeing—we get a scheme like the following: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X 10 9 9 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 — 6 5 5 5 — 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 — 3 3 — 3 2 2 2 — 2 2 — 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 — 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Here the Roman figures indicate classes or kinds of wants, the Arabic, the concrete wants, or part wants, in each class. We thus see at a glance that, the more important the class, the more important are the concrete wants that stand highest in the class: that, even in the highest class, there are concrete wants which are outweighed by concrete wants of almost every other lower class: and that there are classes of want, like IV and VII, which are not satisfied gradually, as in the assuaging of hunger, but where want breaks off at a high level and does not emerge again till wants of much inferior classes have been met.