Let us analyze the co-operation of Nature of which I have spoken. Nature places two things at our disposal—‹materials› and ‹forces›. Most of the material objects which contribute to the satisfaction of our wants and desires are brought into the state of ‹utility› which renders them fit for our use only by the intervention of labour, by the application of the human faculties. But the elements, the atoms, if you will, of which these objects are composed, are the gifts, I will add the ‹gratuitous› gifts, of Nature. This observation is of the very highest importance, and will, I believe, throw a new light upon the theory of wealth. The reader will have the goodness to bear in mind that I am inquiring at present in a general way into the moral and physical constitution of man, his wants, his faculties, his relations with Nature—apart from the consideration of Exchange, which I shall enter upon in the next chapter. We shall then see in what respect, and in what manner, social transactions modify the phenomena. [p089] It is very evident, that if man in an isolated state must, so to speak, ‹purchase› the greater part of his satisfactions by an exertion, by an effort, it is rigorously exact to say that prior to the intervention of any such exertion, any such effort, the materials which he finds at his disposal are the ‹gratuitous› gifts of Nature. After the first effort on his part, however slight it may be, they cease to be ‹gratuitous›; and if the language of Political Economy had been always exact, it would have been to material objects in this state, and before human labour had been bestowed upon them, that the term ‹raw materials› (‹matières premières›) would have been exclusively applied. I repeat that this ‹gratuitous› quality of the gifts of Nature, anterior to the intervention of labour, is of the very highest importance. I said in my second chapter that Political Economy was the ‹theory of value›; I add now, and by anticipation, that things begin to possess ‹value› only when it is given to them by labour. I intend to demonstrate afterwards that everything which is ‹gratuitous› for man in an isolated state is gratuitous for man in his social condition, and that the gratuitous gifts of Nature, ‹whatever be their› «UTILITY», have no value. I say that a man who receives a benefit from Nature, directly and without any effort on his part, cannot be considered as rendering himself an ‹onerous service›, and, consequently, that he cannot render to another any service with reference to things which are common to all. Now, where there are no services rendered and received there is no ‹value›.