The world may be regarded as a vast workshop which Providence has supplied abundantly with materials and forces of which human labour makes use. Anterior efforts, present efforts, even future efforts, or promises of efforts, are exchanged for each other. Their relative merit, as established by exchange, and independently of gratuitous forces and materials, brings out the element of value; and it is of the value created by each individual that each is owner or proprietor. But what does it signify, it may be said, that a man is proprietor only of the value, or of the acknowledged merit of his service? The possession of the value carries along with it that of the utility which is mingled with it. John has two sacks of corn. Peter has only one. John, you say, is twice as rich in ‹value›. Surely, then, he is also twice as rich in utility, even natural utility. He has twice as much to eat. Unquestionably it is so: but has he not performed double the labour? Let us come, nevertheless, to the root of the objection. Essential, absolute wealth resides, as we have said, in utility. The very word implies this. It is ‹utility› alone which renders ‹service› (‹uti›—in French ‹servir›). It alone has relation to our wants, and it is it alone which man has in view when he devotes himself to labour. Utility at all events is the ultimate object of pursuit; for things do not satisfy our hunger or quench our thirst because they include value, but because they possess utility. We muse take into account, however, the phenomenon which society exhibits in this respect. Man in a state of isolation seeks to realize utility without [p237] thinking about value, of which, in that state, he can have no idea. In the social state, on the contrary, man seeks to realize value irrespective of utility. The commodity he produces is not intended to satisfy his own wants, and he has little interest in its being useful or not. It is for the person who desires to acquire it to judge of that. What concerns the producer is, that it should bear as high a value as possible in the market, as he is certain that the utilities he has to receive in return will be in proportion to the value of what he carries thither. The division of labour and of occupation leads to this result, that each produces what he does not himself consume, and consumes what he does not himself produce. As producers, what we are in quest of is value; as consumers, what we seek is utility. Universal experience testifies to this. The man who polishes a diamond, or embroiders lace, or distils brandy, or cultivates the poppy, never inquires whether the consumption of these commodities is good or bad in itself. He gives his work, and if his work realizes value, that is enough for him.