The gist of Simmel's argument comes out in the following: "The object is not for us a thing of value so long as it is dissolved in the subjective process as an immediate stimulator of feelings." Desire must encounter obstacles before a value can appear. "It is only the postponement of an object through obstacles, _the anxiety lest the object escape_ [italics mine], the tension of struggle for it, which brings into existence that aggregate of desire elements which may be designated as intensity or passion of volition." Value is conditioned upon a "distance between subject and object" (_A. J. S._, 589-90).--I waive for the moment Simmel's apparent insistence upon the element of conscious desire as essential to value, though I shall attack that doctrine in a later chapter on the psychology of value. It is enough to point out here that this "distance between subject and object" is adequately present, that there is surely "anxiety lest the object escape," if only the object be sufficiently limited in supply, independently of the existence of other objects so limited.--Simmel undertakes to meet this objection by holding that "scarcity, purely as such, is only a negative quantity, an existence characterized by a non-existence. The non-existent, however, cannot be operative" (_Phil. des G._, p. 57).--But the scarcity, I would reply, is not, as he holds, "the quantitative relation in which the object stands to the aggregate of its kind" (_A. J. S._, p. 592), but is rather a relation between the object and our wants. A bushel of wheat would be a scarcity, a bushel of diamonds a superabundance, for a man. There is a positive thing here, not a mere "non-existence," and that positive thing is the _unsatisfied want_. _Cf._ Pareto, _Cours d'Economie Politique_, vol. I, p. 34. See further, on the psychology of value, chapter X, and on Professor Seligman's theory of the relativity of value, chapter XVI, of the present volume. [27] Laughlin, J. L., _Elements of Political Economy_, rev. ed., copyright 1902, p. 18: "Value ... is a ratio between two objective articles." See also Professor Laughlin's rejoinder to Clow's "The Quantity Theory and its Critics," _Journal of P. E._, 1902, where Professor Laughlin insists that exchange value is "something physical." Professor Davenport, _Value and Distribution_, Chicago, 1908, p. 569, defines value similarly. [28] _Value and Distribution_, p. 569. [29] Professor Davenport, caught between two apparently invincible logical difficulties, accepts this situation frankly, as, seemingly, the only thing possible. See _Value and Distribution_, p. 184, n. The ratio has no terms for him. [30] _Value and Distribution_, pp. 330-31. [31] "Values, Positive and Relative." _Annals_, vol. IX.