Now supposing that the skill and power of the labourers were so to increase, that, in the same time and with the same personal exertions, they could obtain three soals and fifteen mackerel, it is obvious that the relative value of soals to mackerel would remain the same, but they would both have essentially altered their value compared with all those commodities which still required the same quantity of labour to produce the same supply of them. With regard to such commodities, soals and mackerel would have become of less value, and consequently they would have become of less value with regard to a given quantity of labour. The correct language in this case would be, not that labour had become dearer, but that soals and mackerel had become cheaper. And if the same increase of skill and power could be conceived to extend to all other commodities, and all commodities were similarly circumstanced as to their mode of production and bringing to market; it cannot be doubted, that though they might retain the same relative value compared with each other, they would all become more plentiful with regard to the wants of the society, and any given quantity of labour. And the correct language would still be, not that labour had become dearer, but that all commodities had become cheaper. This fall would be a fall in the absolute and natural value of commodities; and as long as labour alone was concerned in their production, and they were brought to market immediately, it would be allowed that the different quantities of labour employed upon them would be a correct measure both of their relative value compared with each other, and of their absolute and natural value in reference to the conditions of their supply. Their natural values would be exactly represented by the different quantities of labour worked up in them; while their natural prices would be these different quantities of labour estimated in money, according to the money price of the labour employed. But at a very early period of society a considerable interval must elapse between the exertion of some sorts of labour and the completion of the article on which they are employed. And the next simplest form of production, beyond the result of mere labour, is that, where, in addition to the labour employed directly on the commodity and on the simple tools necessary to its production, the condition of the supply requires that a certain compensation be made in the final remuneration for the time which has elapsed from the period of the advances of the labour, to the period when the labourer, or capitalist, can be remunerated. This compensation, which equally applies to the formation of the capital, as to the products to be obtained by it, is the profit which must be paid on the advances of the labour, and is absolutely necessary to the encouragement of such advances.