From which Adam Smith concludes that labor is “the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” The exact meaning of the conclusion, it must be observed, is not plain. If “exchangeable value” meant mere exchange value in the modern sense—the power of a good to exchange for some quantity of another good objectively measured in weight, volume, or length—then money would afford a measure of this value quite as reliable as labor and far more convenient. What is intended by “exchangeable value” is a question we may approach later, but whatever exact meaning we take for this term, we find that the series of general observations preceding the conclusion does not prove this conclusion as a precise proposition. This passage is typical of the chapter. Painstaking study of Smith’s theory or theories of value is also made difficult by occasional lapses into very loose terminology. For an instance, we find the sentence, “equal quantities of labor, at all times and places, may be said to be of equal value to the laborer.”[9] The context shows that, in all probability, value here means _disutility_.[10] The several different minor theories of value given by Adam Smith are not woven into a whole by him. The student of his views approaches his great work with a respect that amounts to awe, and it takes time to force himself to the conclusion that there is a part of the _Wealth of Nations_ which, though profoundly suggestive, is not entirely consistent. The attempt, instinctively made by the commentator, to find a hidden consistency behind the various incompatible utterances, to discover a hypothesis upon which the contradictions may be declared apparent only, is, according to the belief of the writer, fore-doomed to complete failure. Within the plurality of explanations of value two main divisions are discernible, the first contained in Chapter V, and the second in Chapters VI and VII of Book I.[11] These are the “philosophical” and the “empirical” accounts distinguished in the first chapter of this essay. The first of these is in its place stated in general terms, as if unconditionally true, but when the empirical account is reached, a considerable part of what had been said previously is restricted to “that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land.”[12] For this reason what has been called the “philosophical,” may, in the case of Adam Smith, also be called the “primitive” account of value.