As an illustration, this scheme has a certain value, but it suggests more objections perhaps than it settles. The division of wants into kinds or classes, whether the principle of that division be determined by the nature of the sensations or by the objects which satisfy them, requires a better psychological basis than has yet been demonstrated. For instance, a generic want like that called Needs of Subsistence, is about as vague a conception as could well be imagined. And, again, on the “calculus of pleasure and pain,” the satisfaction of want generally involves degrees and levels of physical, intellectual, and æsthetic feeling which cannot be represented by any such simple diagram. For these reasons—and also because the theory of value is not accredited by seeming to rest so much on a utilitarian psychology—I have not included the _Sättigungscala_ in the text. There are some ingenious and interesting calculations on the subject in Wieser (_Natürlicher Werth_, p. 27), which I have added in the Appendix. CHAPTER V THE MARGINAL UTILITY Thus far we have seen that, utility being the general relation in which all goods, by their very definition, stand to human wellbeing, value is that higher, more intimate, more limited relation in which some particular importance to human wellbeing is conditioned by the having or losing of some particular good, and a relation of actual dependence is established between the want and the good. We pass now to the positive consideration of the measurement of value. If one good stands over against one want—that is to say, if the satisfaction of a single want is dependent on the possession of or power over a single good—there is no difficulty: the value is the entire utility which the good affords in the given case. But the estimates of value which practically concern us are not so simple. We must face the fact that most goods which we have to value are not single articles, but many goods of the same kind—stocks of goods—and that, at the same time, most goods are capable of satisfying several wants. Water, for instance, may be used for drinking, for washing, for cooling, for ornamental fountains, etc., as books may be used for reading, for lending, for ornament, for packing, for waste paper, and so on. But these are uses of very different importance, and the question is: Which of these utilities is it that determines the value? This important point cannot be too plainly put, and it will be wise to follow the Austrian writers generally in taking the risk of being tedious rather than of being obscure.