When the public, on the inspection of two inventories, pronounces one man to be richer than another, it is not meant to say that the relative amount of the two properties is indicative of the relative absolute wealth of the two men, or the amount of enjoyments they can command. There enters into positive satisfactions and enjoyments a certain amount of ‹common and gratuitous utility› which alters this proportion very much. As regards the light of day, the air we breathe, the heat of the sun, all men are equal; and Inequality—as indicative of a difference in property or value —has reference only to ‹onerous utility›. Now I have often said, and I shall probably have occasion frequently to repeat the remark (for it is the finest and most striking, although perhaps the least understood, of the social harmonies, and includes all the others), that it is of the essence of progress—and indeed in this alone progress consists—to transform onerous into gratuitous utility—to diminish value without diminishing utility—to permit each individual to procure the same things with less effort, either to make or to remunerate; to increase continually the mass of things which are ‹common›, and the enjoyment of which, being distributed in a uniform manner among all, effaces by degrees the Inequality which results from difference of fortune. We must not omit to analyze very carefully the result of this mechanism. In contemplating the phenomena of the social world, how often have I had occasion to feel the profound justice of Rousseau’s saying: “Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer ce qu’on voit tous les jours!” It is difficult to observe accurately what we see every day; ‹Custom›, that veil which blinds the eyes of the vulgar, and which the attentive observer cannot always throw off, prevents our discerning the most marvellous of all the Economic phenomena: real wealth falling incessantly from the domain of Property into that of Community. Let us endeavour to demonstrate and explain this democratic evolution, and, if possible, test its range and its effects. I have remarked elsewhere that if we desire to compare two epochs as regards real wealth and prosperity, we must refer all to a common standard, which is unskilled labour measured by time, and ask ourselves this question—What difference in the amount of satisfaction, according to the degree of advancement which society has reached, is a determinate quantity of unskilled labour—for example, a day’s work of a common labourer—capable of yielding us? [p229] This question implies two others: What was the relation of the satisfaction to unskilled labour at the beginning of the period? What is it now? The difference will be the measure of the advance which gratuitous utility has made relatively to onerous utility—the domain of community relatively to that of property.