cumstances, of exerting an action which might centuple the price, and pitted against a decreasing force in D; nevertheless, so long as U was not in circumstances to exert the whole action, it could exert none at all; so long as D exerted any force, it would exert the whole.

10

U

D

--10

In the opposite case, where u, or the utility value, is suddenly called into action as the controlling force, it will generally 20 be found that this force, in its extremity, has not only been latent previously as regards any effect upon the price, but latent as regards even the consciousness of the individual appreciator. This we saw in the case of the musical toy on the Canadian lake. The buyer had not, until a certain moment, been aware of the potential u which really existed to his own contingent appreciation. No necessity had ever arisen that he should inquire rigorously how much he would submit to give in the case of u becoming the operative force. So much of u as was requisite to sustain D, so much as corresponded to D, had always been within the consciousness of the purchaser; and how much further it was capable of ascending, had been hitherto a mere question of useless curiosity. But when a sudden and violent revolution in all the circumstances has arisen for the purchaser, when D is felt to have become infinite, the difficulty of obtaining the article (except by one sole anomalous chance) being now greater than any finite expression could measure, What follows? Does the price become infinite, as it would do if it were supposed at all to follow D? No; but D, though vexatiously present to the calculations of the purchaser, is no longer operative: it has become silent; and the alternate force u (now when the case has taken effect, that either U screwed up

to its maximum must rule, or else the article must be lost) instantly steps into the place of D, and becomes exclusively operative. The dotted perpendicular line represents the sudden ascent of u to double of its preceding altitude. How much further it would ascend, must depend entirely upon the feeling and taste of the individual as regulating his wishes, and upon his disposable money as regulating his power.

Now, under this symbolic expression we may see at once the hyperbolic extravagance of that notion which has so often been cited with praise from Adam Smith, as though an object might be very great by its capacity in respect of D, and yet very little (or indeed nothing) by its capacity in respect of u. Diamonds, it is asserted, are trivial in respect of U, but enormously high on the scale measured by D. This is a blank impossibility. The mistake arises under a total misconception of what u indicates, as will be shown in a succeeding section. The countervailing proposition in Adam Smith, viz. that other and ordinary objects, such as water, may reverse these conditions, being trivial in respect of D, but vast in respect of u, is also false; false in the mode and principle of valuation. But this latter proposition is false only in fact; it is, at the same time, a very conceivable case: whereas the former proposition is false as to the very ideal possibility, - it is inconceivable and monstrous. may outrun D in any extent; and generally does so to some extent. It is rare that the whole potential utility value is exhausted by the cost or difficulty value. But the inverse case is monstrous: D can never outrun u by the most fractional increment. A man who would, in a case of necessity, give fifty guineas for an article rather than absolutely miss it, may habitually buy it for no more than three, simply because such is the price as squared

U

to the scale of D. But it is impossible that a man, valuing the article (under the very ultimate pressure of U) at eight guineas, should consent to give twelve, because D could not be overcome for less.

This latter part of the present section, viz. the symbolic illustration of the principles which control exchange value, may seem to the reader too long. Perhaps it is so; but he cannot pronounce it positively "de trop," for it enforces and explains this law, viz. that the two eternally co-present forces, essential to the idea of exchange, nevertheless govern alternately one by one, - each alternately becoming inert, and neither modifying the other by the smallest fraction, when that "other" is raised by circumstances into the true controlling principle. Now, this explanation never can be held useless, so long as it shall be remembered that Adam Smith, in a passage not seldom cited as a proper basis for a whole system of dependent political economy, has absolutely declared it possible for a man to pay, by any assignable sum, a greater price for a commodity than that same man conceives its uttermost intrinsic value to justify: he will give more than the maximum which he would give. Not by one iota less extravagant is the proposition fairly deducible from his words. Diamonds have no u value, he assures us, no use (which is the one sole ground upon which, at any price, a man buys anything at all); and yet, because the D value is great, in spite of this "no use," many a man will give an enormous price for diamonds which proposition is a fierce impossibility. And although, as will be seen in the proper section, the word use" is here employed most abusively, and in a sense unphilosophically limited; yet in the same proportion by which this distinction, as to the word "use," will redress some of the extravagant consequences deducible from the

66

Smithian doctrine, in that same proportion will the famous antithesis upon diamonds and water, from which these consequences flow, vanish like a vapor; and thus will become available (against a party not within that writer's contemplation) a remark made by the critical dissertationist on value, (as well as by the late Mr. Coleridge,) viz. that oftentimes these plausible paradoxes on that side which offers any brilliancy, will be found quite unsustainable; whilst on that side which can be sustained, they will be found empty truisms, brilliant so far as they throw up a novel falsehood; but where they reverberate a truth, utterly without either novelty or force. This remark was levelled by the dissertationist at others,

chiefly (I believe) at Ricardo; but there is a luxury in seeing the engineer of so keen a truth, either in his own person, or that of his friends, "hoist by his own petard."

SECTION III. — ON THE TRUE RELATIONS IN LOGIC OF THE EXPRESSIONS U AND D.

THERE is no one manifestation of imbecile logic more frequent, than the disposition to find in all controversies merely verbal disputes. Very early in life I came to be aware that this compendious mode of dismissing weighty questions by alleging, that in fact they seemed rather to offer a dispute about words, than about things-had been always one regular and conscious resource of cant with the feeble and the indolent. And amongst the first conclusions, drawn from my own reading experience, was this, that for one known dispute seeming to concern things, but ultimately evaporating in verbal cavils, (supposing even that one to exist in any recorded form,) there might

In

be cited many hundreds of disputes which seemed, or had been declared, to be verbal; whilst, by all their consequences, they set in violently towards things.10 The tendencies of men are altogether towards that error. private companies, where the tone of society is so underbred as to allow of two people annoying the rest by disputation, such things as verbal disputes may possibly occur; but in public, where men dispute by the pen, or under ceremonial restraints, giving time for consideration, and often with large consequences awaiting the issue, such follies are out of the question: the strong natural instinct attached to the true and substantial, the practical results at hand, and the delays interposed for reflection, bar all opening to such visionary cases, possibilities indeed in rerum naturâ, but which no man has ever witnessed; and accordingly at this hour, throughout all our vast European libraries, no man can lay his hand upon one solitary book which argues a verbal question as if it were a real one, or contends for a verbal issue.11

The same capital mistake of false logic, mistaking its own greatest imbecility for conspicuous strength, has often alighted upon changes in terminology, or upon technical improvements of classification, as being in virtue no more than verbal changes. Here, again, we find Kant, though not the man meant by nature for clearing up delusions in the popular understanding, rightly contending that, in the science of algebra for instance, to impose new denominations was often enough to reveal new relations which previously had not been suspected. In reality we might go much further; and of some changes in algebraic terminology, (as particularly the invention of negative exponents,) I should say, that they had a value which could be adequately expressed only by such an analogy as might be drawn from the completion of a galvanic circle,