Having spoken of our ‹wants›, and our ‹means› of providing for them, it remains to say a word respecting our ‹satisfactions›. They are the result of the entire mechanism we have described. It is by the greater or less amount of physical, intellectual, and moral ‹satisfactions› which mankind enjoy, that we discover whether [p095] the machine works well or ill. This is the reason why the word ‹consommation› [‹consumption›[24]], adopted by our Economists would have a profound meaning if we used it in its etymological signification as synonymous with ‹end›, or ‹completion›. Unfortunately, in common, and even in scientific, language, it presents to the mind a gross and material idea, exact without doubt when applied to our physical wants, but not at all so when used with reference to those of a more elevated order. The cultivation of corn, the manufacture of woollen cloth, terminate in ‹consumption› [consommation]. But can this be said with equal propriety of the works of the artist, the songs of the poet, the studies of the lawyer, the prelections of the professor, the sermons of the clergyman? It is here that we again experience the inconvenience of that fundamental error which caused Adam Smith to circumscribe Political Economy within the limits of a material circle; and the reader will pardon me for frequently making use of the term ‹satisfaction›, as applicable to all our wants and all our desires, and as more in accordance with the larger scope which I hope to be able to give to the science. Political Economists have been frequently reproached with confining their attention exclusively to the ‹interests of the consumer›. “You forget the producer,” we are told. But satisfaction being the end and design of all our efforts—the grand ‹consummation› or termination of the economic phenomena—is it not evident that it is there that the touchstone of progress is to be found? A man’s happiness and well-being are not measured by his ‹efforts›, but by his ‹satisfactions›, and this holds equally true of society in the aggregate. This is one of those truths which are never disputed when applied to an individual, but which are constantly disputed when applied to society at large. The phrase to which exception has been taken only means this, that Political Economy estimates the worth of what we do, not by the labour which it costs us to do it, but by the ultimate result, which resolves itself definitively into an increase or diminution of the general prosperity.