Were I to make my own bread, I must devote myself to a labour infinitely more complicated, but strictly analogous to that which the necessity of fetching water from the spring would have imposed upon me. The elements of bread exist everywhere in nature. As J. B. Say has judiciously remarked, it is neither possible nor necessary for man to create anything. Gases, salts, electricity, vegetable life, all exist; my business is to unite them, assist them, combine them, transport them, availing myself of that great laboratory called the earth, in which mysteries are accomplished from which human science has scarcely raised the veil. If the operations to which I must devote myself in the pursuit of my design are in the aggregate very complicated, each of them, taken singly, is as simple as the act of drawing water from the fountain. Every effort I make is simply a service which I render to myself; and if, in consequence of a bargain freely entered into, it happens that other persons save me some of these efforts, or the whole of them, these are so many ‹services› which I receive. The aggregate of these services, compared with those which I render in return, constitute the value of the Bread and determine its amount. A convenient intermediate commodity intervenes to facilitate this exchange of services, and even to serve as a measure of their relative importance—Money. But this makes no substantial difference,—the principle remains exactly the same, just as in mechanics the transmission of forces is subject to the same law, whether there be one or several intermediate wheels. This is so true that, when the loaf is worth fourpence, for example, if a good bookkeeper wishes to analyze its value, he will succeed in discovering, amid the multiplicity of transactions which go to the accomplishment of the final result, all those whose services have contributed to form that value,—all those who have saved labour to the man who finally pays for it as the consumer. He discovers, first of all, the baker, who retains his five per cent., [p143] and from that percentage remunerates the mason who has built his oven, the wood-cutter who prepares his billets, etc. Then comes the miller, who receives not only the recompense of his own labour, but the means of remunerating the quarryman who has furnished his millstones, the labourer who has formed his dam, etc. Other portions of the total value go to the thresher, the reaper, the labourer, the sower, until you account for the last farthing. No part of it assuredly goes to remunerate God and nature. The very idea is absurd, and yet this is rigorously implied in the theory of the Economists, who attribute a certain portion of the value of a product to matter or natural forces. No; we still find that what ‹has value› is not the Loaf, but the series of ‹services› which have put me in possession of it.