What we must do, on the contrary, is to put Value altogether out of sight, particularly the consideration of money; and ask the question, What, in such and such a country, and, at such and such an epoch, is the amount of each kind of special utility, and the sum total of all utilities, which correspond to a given amount of unskilled labour? In other words, what amount of material comfort and prosperity can an unskilled workman earn as the reward of his daily toil? [p172] We may affirm that the natural social order is harmonious, and goes on improving, if, on the one hand, the number of unskilled labours, receiving the smallest possible remuneration, continues to diminish; and if, on the other, that remuneration, measured not in value or in money, but in real satisfactions, continues constantly on the increase.[36] The ancients have well described all the combinations of Exchange:— ‹Do ut des› (commodity against commodity), ‹Do ut facias› (commodity against service), ‹Facio ut des› (service against commodity), ‹Facio ut facias› (service against service).[37] Seeing that products and services are thus exchanged for one another, it is quite necessary that they should have something in common, something by which they can be compared and estimated—namely, ‹Value›. But value is always identically the same. Whether it be in the product or in the service, it has always the same origin and foundation. This being so, we may ask, is Value originally and essentially in the ‹commodity›, and is it only by analogy that we extend the notion to the ‹service›? Or, on the contrary, does Value reside in the service, and is it not mixed up and amalgamated with the product, simply and exclusively because the service is so? Some people seem to think that this is a question of pure subtilty. We shall see by-and-by. At present I shall only observe, that it would be strange if, in Political Economy, a good or a bad definition of Value were a matter of indifference. I cannot doubt that, at the outset, Political Economists thought they discovered value rather in the product, as such, than in the matter of the product. The Physiocrates [the ‹Économistes› of Quesnay’s school] attributed value exclusively to land, and stigmatized as ‹sterile› such classes as added nothing to matter,—so strictly in their eyes were ‹value› and ‹matter› bound up together. Adam Smith ought to have discarded this idea, since he makes ‹value› flow from ‹labour›. Do not pure services, services ‹per se›, exact labour, and, consequently, do they not imply value? Near to the truth as Smith had come, he did not make himself master of it; for, besides pronouncing formally that labour, in order to possess value, must be applied to matter, to something physically [p173] tangible and capable of accumulation, we know that, like the Physiocrates, he ranked those who simply render services among the unproductive classes.