But surely the circle is very clear here: the price (the expression of the value) of the good depends on the efficiency of the labor that produces it; and the efficiency of the labor depends on the value (of which price is the expression) of the good produced. Our "pervasive element" is complicated, as a determinant of social value, with several factors, among them _the value of the wealth of the different producers_, and the efficiency, which can be defined only in terms of _value product_, of the workers. Value is an ultimate in the explanation of value, and the effort to make individual costs and utilities an ultimate explanation of value has failed--as it must needs fail--even in the hands of Professor Clark. The validity of this criticism, assuming it valid, in no way invalidates Professor Clark's contention that value is, after all, the work of the social organism, and that the value of a good, at a given time, measures its importance to the social organism at that time. The difficulty with the analysis just criticized is that it has not been an analysis of an organic process, but rather, a mathematical study of sums. The individuals have been treated, not as interacting in their mental processes, but as isolated atoms, each of whom has a definite individual _quantum_ of pain or pleasure, and the social unit of pain or pleasure has been treated as simply a sum of these. But it is characteristic of an organism that the simple rules of arithmetic do not hold precisely in its activity. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and something different from that sum. Professor Clark elsewhere says:-- But the owner is a part of the social body, and is the organic whole indifferent to his suffering? If so, society is an imperfect and nerveless organism. It ought to feel, as a whole, the sufferings of every member, and what makes or mars the happiness of every slightest molecule, should make or mar the happiness of all. A sympathetic connection between members of society exists, etc.[86] True: and indicative of the true line of study for the conception of value as a product of an organic society. But in the foregoing analysis we have no hint of "nerves" or social sympathy or other manifestation of a collective mental activity. The "social psychology" promised on page 261 of the article just reviewed, turns out not a social psychology at all, but simply a summation of the results of many individual psychologies. But the line along which the true nature of value is to be found is clearly indicated in the general conception of the psychical organic unity of society, and it remains for the present writer to make use of the studies in social psychology of Tarde, Cooley, Baldwin, and others,[87] not available, for the most part, when Professor Clark's article was written, in an effort to get nearer the heart of the problem.