The design of the science is not, like that of exchange, to discover the ‹present Relation of two services›, for, in that case, money would answer the purpose in view. What the science aims at discovering is ‹the Relation between Effort and Satisfaction›; and for this purpose, a measure of value, did it exist, would teach us nothing, for the effort brings always to the satisfaction a varying proportion of gratuitous utility which has no value. It is because this element of our well-being has been lost sight of that the [p171] majority of writers have deplored the absence of a measure of Value. They have not reflected that it would not enable them to answer the question proposed—What is the comparative Wealth or prosperity of two classes, of two countries, of two generations? In order to resolve that question, the science would require a measure which should reveal to it not only ‹the relation of two services›, which might be the vehicle of very different amounts of gratuitous utility, but the relation ‹of the Effort to the Satisfaction›, and that measure could be no other than the effort itself, or labour. But how can labour serve as a measure? Is it not itself a most variable element? Is it not more or less skilful, laborious, precarious, dangerous, repugnant? Does it not require, more or less, the intervention of certain intellectual faculties, of certain moral virtues? and, according as it is influenced by these circumstances, is it not rewarded by a remuneration which is in the highest degree variable? There is one species of labour which, at all times, and in all places, is identically the same, and it is that which must serve as a type. I mean labour the most simple, rude, primitive, muscular,—that which is freest from all natural co-operation—that which every man can execute—that which renders services of a kind which one can render to himself—that which exacts no exceptional force or skill, and requires no apprenticeship,—industry such as is found in the very earliest stages of society: the work, in short, of the simple day-labourer. That kind of labour is everywhere the most abundantly supplied, the least special, the most homogeneous, and the worst remunerated. Wages in all other departments are proportioned and graduated on this basis, and increase with every circumstance which adds to its importance. If, then, we wish to compare two social states with each other, we cannot have recourse to a ‹standard of value›, and for two reasons, the one as logical as the other—first, because there is none; and, secondly, because, if there were, it would give a wrong answer to our question, neglecting, as it must, a considerable and progressive element in human prosperity—gratuitous utility.