Suppose an instrument of labour to intervene, what would be the result? That the utility would be more easily obtained. The service has thus less ‹value›. We certainly pay less for our books since the invention of printing. Admirable phenomenon, too little understood! You say that the instruments of labour produce Value—you are mistaken—it is Utility, and gratuitous Utility, you should say. As to Value, instead of producing it, they tend more and more to annihilate it. It is quite true that the person who made the machine has rendered a service. He receives a remuneration by which the value of the product is augmented. This is the reason why we fancy we recompense the utility which the machine produces. It is an illusion. What we remunerate is the ‹services› which all those who have co-operated in making and working the machine have rendered to us. So little does the value reside in the utility produced, that even after having recompensed these new ‹services›, we acquire the utility on easier and cheaper terms than before. Let us accustom ourselves to distinguish Utility from Value. Without this there can be no Economic science. I give utterance to no paradox when I affirm that Utility and Value, so far from being identical, or oven similar, are ideas opposed to one another. Want, Effort, Satisfaction: here we have man regarded in an Economic point of view. The relation of utility is with Want and Satisfaction. The relation of Value is with Effort. Utility is the Good, which puts an end to the want by the satisfaction. Value is the Evil, for it springs from the obstacle which is interposed between the want and the satisfaction. But for these obstacles, there would have been no Effort either to make or in exchange; Utility would be infinite, gratuitous, and common, ‹without condition›, and the notion of Value would never have [p166] entered into the world. In consequence of these obstacles, Utility is gratuitous only on condition of Efforts exchanged, which, when compared with each other, give rise to Value. The more these obstacles give way before the liberality of nature and the progress of science, the more does utility approximate to the state of being absolutely common and gratuitous, for the onerous condition, and, consequently, the ‹value›, diminish as the obstacles diminish. I shall esteem myself fortunate if, by these dissertations, which may appear subtle, and of which I am condemned to fear at once the length and the conciseness, I succeed in establishing this encouraging truth—‹the legitimate property of value›,—and this other truth, equally consoling—‹the progressive community of utility›. One observation more. All that ‹serves› us is ‹useful› (‹uti›, ‹servir›), and in this respect it is extremely doubtful whether there be anything in the universe (whether in the shape of forces or materials) which is not ‹useful› to man.