There is here, however, a circumstance which it is necessary thoroughly to comprehend, if we would not see discordance where there is in reality only harmony. It is this, that the purchaser of water obtains it on easier terms, that is to say, gives a less amount of labour in exchange for a given quantity of it, each time that a step of progress of this kind is gained, although in such circumstances he has to give a remuneration for the instrument by means of which nature is constrained to act. Formerly he paid for the labour of carrying the water; now he pays not only for that, but for the labour expended in constructing the barrow, the wheel, and the pipe—and yet, ‹everything included›, he pays less; and this shows us how false and futile the reasoning is which would persuade us that that part of the remuneration which is applicable to capital is a burden on the consumer. Will these reasoners never understand that, for each result obtained, capital supersedes more labour than it exacts? All that I have said is equally applicable to the production of corn. In that case also, anterior to all human labour, there has [p274] been an immense, a measureless, amount of natural industry at work, the secrets of which the most advanced science can yet give no account of. Gases, salts, are diffused through the soil and the atmosphere. Electricity, affinity, the wind, the rain, light, heat, vegetable life, play successively their parts, often unknown to us, in transporting, transforming, uniting, dividing, combining these elements; and this marvellous industry, the activity and utility of which elude our appreciation and even our imagination, has yet no ‹value›. Value makes its appearance at the first intervention of the labour of man, who has, in this, more perhaps than in the other instance we have given, a ‹supplementary› labour to perform, in order to complete what nature has begun. To direct these natural forces, and remove the obstacles which impede their action, man takes possession of an instrument, which is the soil, and he does so without injury to anyone; for this instrument had previously no value. This is not a matter of argument, but a matter of fact. Show me, in any part of the world you choose, land which has not been subjected directly or indirectly to human action, and I will show you land destitute of value.[61] [p275]