But although I have shown that value is not inherent in matter, and cannot be classed among its attributes, I am far from maintaining that it does not pass from the ‹service› to the ‹product›, so as (if I may be allowed the expression) to become incorporated with it. I hope my opponents will not believe that I am pedant enough to wish to exclude from common language such phrase as these—gold ‹has value›, wheat ‹has value›, land ‹has value›. But I have a right to demand of science why this is so? and if I am answered, because gold, wheat, and land possess in themselves intrinsic ‹value›, then I think I have a right to say—“You are mistaken, and your error is dangerous. You are mistaken, for there are gold and land which are destitute of value, gold and land which have not yet had any human labour bestowed upon them. Your error is dangerous, for it leads men to regard what is simply a right to a reciprocity of services as a usurpation of the gratuitous gifts of God.” I am quite willing, then, to acknowledge that products are possessed of value, provided you grant me that it is not essential to them, and that it attaches itself to services, and proceeds from them. This is so true, that a very important consequence, and one which is fundamental in Political Economy, flows from it—a consequence which has not been, and indeed could not be remarked. It is this:— ‹Where value has passed from the service to the product, it undergoes in the product all the risks and chances to which it is subject in the service itself.› It is not fixed in the product, as it would have been had it been one of its own intrinsic qualities. It is essentially variable; it may rise indefinitely, or it may fall until it disappears altogether, just as the species of service to which it owes its origin would have done. The man who makes a cup to-day for the purpose of selling it a year hence, confers value on it, and that value is determined by that of the service—not the value which the service possesses at the present moment, but that which it will possess at the end of the year. If at the time when the cup comes to be sold such services are more in demand, the cup will be worth more, or it will be depreciated in the opposite case.