_X_. I have the pleasure, then, to assure you that you were perfectly right. It will _not_ do. But I understand you perfectly. You mean to evade my argument that the increase of wages shall settle upon profits; according to this argument, it will settle upon price, and not upon profits; yet again on price in such a way as to escape the absurdity of two relations of value existing between the very same things. But, Phædrus, this rise will be a mere metaphysical one, and no real rise. The hat, you say, has risen; but still it commands no more of the gloves, because they also have risen. How, then, has either risen? The rise is purely ideal. _Phæd_. It is so, X.; but that I did not overlook; for tell me--on Mr. Ricardo's principle, will not all things double their value simultaneously, if the quantity of labor spent in producing all should double simultaneously? _X_. It will, Phædrus. _Phæd_. And yet nothing will exchange for more or less than before. _X_. True; but the rise is not ideal, for all that, but will affect everybody. A pound of wheat, which previously bought three pounds of salt, will still buy three pounds; but, then, the salt-maker and the wheat-maker will have only one pound of those articles where before he had two. However, the difference between the two cases cannot fully be understood, without a previous examination of certain distinctions, which I will make the subject of our next dialogue; and the rather, because, apart from our present question, at every step we should else be embarrassed, as all others have been, by the perplexity attending these distinctions. Meantime, as an answer to your argument, the following consideration will be quite sufficient. The case which your argument respects is that in which wages are supposed to rise? Why? In consequence of a _real_ rise in corn or something else. As a means of meeting this rise, wages rise; but the increased value of wages is only a means to an end, and the laborer cares about the rise only in that light. The end is--to give him the same quantity of corn, suppose. That end attained, he cares nothing about the means by which it is attained. Now, your ideal rise of wages does not attain this end. The corn has _really_ risen; this is the first step. In consequence of this, an ideal rise follows in all things, which evades the absurdities of a real rise--and evades the Ricardian doctrine of profits; but, then, only by also evading any real rise in wages, the necessity of which (in order to meet the real rise in corn) first led to the whole movement of price. But this you will more clearly see after our next dialogue. * * * * * DIALOGUE THE FOURTH. ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF TWO CELEBRATED DISTINCTIONS IN THE THEORY OF VALUE.