“‹Utility› (the property which certain things and certain acts have
of serving us, of being useful to us) is complex,—one part we owe to
the action of nature, another to the action of man.”—“With reference
to a given result, the more nature has done the less remains for
human action to do.”—“The co-operation of nature is essentially
‹gratuitous›—the co-operation of man, whether intellectual or
muscular, exchanged or not, collective or solitary, is essentially
‹onerous›, as indeed the word ‹Effort› implies.”
And as what is ‹gratuitous› cannot possess ‹value›, since the idea of
‹value› implies ‹onerous› acquisition, it follows that the notion of
Value would be still erroneously conceived, if we were to extend it,
in whole or in part, to the gifts or to the co-operation of nature,
instead of restricting it exclusively to human co-operation.
Thus, from both sides, by two different roads, we arrive at this
conclusion, that ‹value› must have reference to the ‹efforts› which
men make in order to obtain the ‹satisfaction› of their ‹wants›.
In the third chapter we have established that man cannot exist in a
state of isolation. But if, by an effort of imagination, we fancy him
placed in that chimerical situation, that state ‹contrary to nature›,
which the writers of the eighteenth century extolled as the ‹state of
nature›, we shall not fail to see that it does not disclose to us the
idea of Value, although it presents the manifestation of the active
principle which we have termed ‹effort›. The reason is obvious. Value
implies comparison, appreciation, ‹estimation›, measure. In order
that two things should measure each other, it is necessary that they
be commensurable, and, in order to that, they must be of the same
kind. In a state of isolation, with what could we compare effort?
With want? With satisfaction? In that case, we could go no farther
than to pronounce that the effort was more or less appropriate, more
or less opportune. In the social state, what we compare (and it is
this comparison which gives rise to the idea of Value) is the effort
of one man with the effort of another man,—two phenomena of the same
nature, and, consequently, ‹commensurable›.
Thus, the definition of the word Value, in order to be exact, must
have reference not only to human efforts, but likewise to those
efforts which are exchanged or exchangeable. Exchange does more than
exhibit and measure values—it gives them existence. I do not mean
to say that it gives existence to the acts and the things which are
exchanged, but it imparts to their existence the notion of ‹value›.
Now, when two men transfer to each other their present efforts, or
make over mutually the results of their anterior [p135] efforts,
they ‹serve› each other; they render each other reciprocal ‹service›.