The objection to the insistence on the amount of conscious desire or feeling as a criterion of the amount of value holds for social values quite as much as for individual values. The social value of the gold standard, judging by the amount of desire and feeling involved, by the degree to which it was a factor in consciousness, was vastly greater during the campaign of 1896, while its validity was still in question, than it was after it had been validated, and made a really effective fact. Social value depends, not on conscious intensity, but on motivating power. The social consciousness, as the individual consciousness, is economical. And the need for conscious feeling, for conscious desire, in connection with social, as with individual, values, arises when values must be compared, when they are in question, when they must show themselves for what they are, that they may be brought into equilibrium with antagonistic values. And the amount of consciousness will not be greater than the need for it--and, alas, is rarely as great as the need! When a value becomes accepted, when its place is secure, when the equilibrium is established, conscious feeling and desire with reference to it tend to pass away, and peace comes. Tarde seems to recognize this, indeed, when he says (72, n.):-- Of nobility, as of glory, it is proper to remark that it is a force, a means of action, for him who possesses it, but that it is a faith, a peace, for the people who accept it, and who, in believing in it, create it. FOOTNOTES: [154] _Op. cit._, chap. VIII, esp. p. 243. [155] _Ibid._, p. 319. [156] _Ibid._, p. 312. [157] _Ibid._, p. 318. [158] _Ibid._, pp. 333-36. [159] _Ibid._, p. 335. [160] _Op. cit._, pp. 329-30. [161] "La croyance et le desir: possibilite de leur mesure," _Rev. philosophique_, vol. X (1880), pp. 150, 264. "La psychologie en economie politique," _Ibid._, vol. XII (1881), pp. 232, 401. "Les deux sens de la valeur," _Rev. d'economie politique_, 1888, pp. 526, 561. "L'idee de valeur," _Rev. politique et litteraire (Rev. Bleue)_, vol. XVI, 1901. _Psychologie Economique_, Paris, 1902. [162] _Cf._ Conrad, _Grundriss zum Studium der politischen Oekonomie_, Jena, 1902, Erster Teil, p. 10. CHAPTER XIII ECONOMIC SOCIAL VALUE How are we to get out of our circle:[163] The value of a good, A, depends, in part, upon the value embodied in the goods, B, C, and D, possessed by the persons for whom good A has "utility," and whose "effective demand" is a _sine qua non_ of A's value? The most convenient point of departure seems to be the simple situation which Wieser has assumed in his _Natural Value_.[164] Here the "artificial" complications due to private property and to the difference between rich and poor are gone, and only "marginal utility" is left as a regulator of values. But what about value in a situation where there are differences in "purchasing power"? How assimilate the one situation to the other?