Here you have value discovered and defined. Here you have it in its rigorous economic exactitude, excepting the touching trait relative to friendship, which carries us into another sphere, that of sympathy. We may conceive two unfortunates rendering each other reciprocal ‹service›, without inquiring too curiously ‹which of the two discharged the most useful employment›. The exceptional situation imagined by the fabulist explains sufficiently that the principle of sympathy, acting with great force, comes to absorb, so to speak, the minute appreciation of the services exchanged—an appreciation, however, which is indispensable in order to disengage completely the idea of Value. That idea would be complete if all men, or the majority of them, were struck with paralysis or blindness; for the inexorable law of supply and demand would then predominate, and, causing the permanent sacrifice accepted by him who fulfils the more useful employment to disappear, would restore the transaction to the domain of justice. We are all blind or impotent in some respects, and we soon come to understand that, by assisting each other, ‹the burden of misfortune is lightened›. Hence «Exchange». We labour in order to feed, clothe, shelter, enlighten, cure, defend, instruct one another. Hence reciprocal «Services». We compare, we discuss, we ‹estimate› or ‹appreciate› these services. Hence «Value». A multitude of circumstances may augment the relative importance of a Service. We find it greater or less, according as it is more or less useful to us—according as a greater or less number of [p136] people are disposed to render it to us—according as it exacts from them more or less labour, trouble, skill, time, previous study,—and according as it saves more or less of these to ourselves. Value depends not only on these circumstances, but on the judgment we form of them; for it may happen, and it happens frequently, that we esteem a service very highly because we judge it very useful, while in reality it is hurtful. This is the reason why vanity, ignorance, error, exert a certain influence on the essentially elastic and flexible relation which we denominate ‹value›; and we may affirm that the appreciation of services tends to approximate more to absolute truth and justice in proportion as men become more enlightened, more moral, and more refined.