 SAIV. We just saw that payment of labor consisted in a sum of money which would approximately obtain equivalent labor at a future time. We have now to examine the means of obtaining such equivalents. Which question involves the definition of value, wealth, price, and produce? None of these terms are yet defined so as to be understood by the public. But the last, produce, which one might have thought the clearest of all, is, in use, the most ambiguous, and the examination of the kind of ambiguity attendant on its present employment will best open the way to our work. In his chapter on capital, Mr. J. S. Mill instances as a capitalist, a hardware manufacturer, who having intended to spend a certain portion of the proceeds on his business in buying plate and jewels, changes his mind and pays it as wages to additional work people. The effect is stated by Mr. Mill to be that, more food is appropriated to the consumption of productive laborers. Footnote. Book 1, Chapter 4, Section 1. And footnote. Now, I do not ask, though had I written this paragraph, it would surely have been asked of me, what is to become of the silversmiths? If they are truly unproductive persons, we will acquiesce in their extinction. And though in another part of the same passage the hardware merchant is supposed also to dispense with a number of servants, whose food is thus set free for productive purposes, I do not inquire what will be of the effect, painful or otherwise, upon the servants of this emancipation of their food. But I very seriously inquire why ironware is productive and silverware is not. That the merchant consumes the one and sells the other certainly does not constitute the difference, unless it can be shown, which indeed I perceive it to be becoming daily more and more the aim of tradesmen to show, that commodities are made to be sold and not to be consumed. The merchant is an agent of conveyance to the consumer in one case, and is himself the consumer in the other, but the laborers are in either case equally productive, since they have produced goods to the same value, if the hardware and the plate are both goods. Footnote. If Mr. Mill had wished to show the difference in result between consumption and sale, he should have represented the hardware merchant as consuming his own goods instead of selling them. Similarly, the silver merchant as consuming his own goods instead of welling them. Had he done this he would have made his position clearer, though less tenable, and perhaps this was the position he really intended to take, tacitly involving his theory elsewhere stated, and shown in the sequel of this paper to be false, that demand for commodities is not demand for labor. But, by the most diligent scrutiny of the paragraph now under examination, I cannot determine whether it is a fallacy pure and simple, or the half of one fallacy supported by the whole of a greater one, so that I treat it here on the kinder assumption that it is one fallacy only. End footnote. And what distinction separates them? It is indeed possible that in the comparative estimate of the moralist, with which Mr. Mill says political economy has nothing to do, book three, chapter one, section two, a steel fork might appear a more substantial production than a silver one. We may grant also that knives, no less than forks, are good produce, and siths and plowshares serviceable articles. But how of bayonets? Supposing the hardware merchant to affect large sales of these, by help of the setting free of the food of his servants and his silversmith, is he still employing productive laborers, or in Mr. Mill's words, laborers who increase the stock of permanent means of enjoyment? Book one, chapter three, section four, or if, instead of bayonets, he supplies bombs, will not the absolute and final enjoyment of even these energetically produced articles, each of which costs ten pounds, I take Mr. Helps's estimate in his essay on war. Be dependent on a proper choice of time and place for their infundment? Choice, that is to say, depending on those philosophical considerations with which political economy has nothing to do? Footnote. Also, when the wrought silver vases of Spain were dashed to fragments by our custom house officers, because bullion might be imported free of duty, but not brains, was the axe that broke them productive? The artist who wrought them unproductive? Or again, if the woodman's axe is productive, is the executioner's? As also, if the hemp of a cablebee productive does not the productiveness of hemp in a halter depend on its moral more than its material application? End footnote. I should have regretted the need of pointing out inconsistency in any portion of Mr. Mill's work, had not the value of his work preceded from its inconsistencies. He deserves honor among economists by inadvertently disclaiming the principles which he states and tacitly introducing the moral considerations with which he declares his science has no connection. Many of his chapters are, therefore, true and valuable, and the only conclusions of his which I have to dispute are those which follow from his premises. Thus, the idea which lies at the root of the passage we have just been examining, namely, that labor applied to produce luxuries will not support so many persons as labor applied to produce useful articles, is entirely true, but the instance given fails, and in four directions of failure at once, because Mr. Mill has not defined the real meaning of usefulness. The definition which he has given, capacity to satisfy a desire, or serve a purpose, Book III, Chapter I, Section II, applies equally to the iron and silver, while the true definition which he has not given, but which nevertheless underlies the false verbal definition in his mind, and comes out once or twice by accident, as in the words, any support to life or strength in I, III, V, applies to some articles of iron but not to others, and to some articles of silver but not to others. It applies to plows but not to bayonets, and to forks but not to filigree. Filigree that is to say generally ornament dependent on complexity, not on art. The eliciting of the true definitions will give us the reply to our first question, what is value, respecting which, however, we must first hear the popular statements. The word value, when used without adjunct, always means in political economy value and exchange, mil, III, I, II, so that if two ships cannot exchange their rudders, their rudders are, in political economic language, of no value to either. But the subject of political economy is wealth, preliminary remarks, page I, and wealth consists of all useful and agreeable objects which possess exchangeable value, preliminary remarks, page X. It appears then, according to Mr. Mill, that usefulness and agreeableness underlie the exchange value, and must be ascertained to exist in the thing before we can esteem it an object of wealth. Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends not merely on its own nature, but on the number of people who can and will use it. A horse is useless and therefore unsailable if no one can ride, a sword if no one can strike, and meat if no one can eat. Thus every material utility depends on its relative human capacity. Similarly, the agreeableness of a thing depends not merely on its own likableness, but on the number of people who can be got to like it. The relative agreeableness, and therefore sailableness of a pot of the smallest ale, and of a doness painted by a running brook, depends virtually on the opinion of demos, in the shape of Christopher Sly. One is to say the agreeableness of a thing depends on its relatively human disposition. Therefore political economy, being a science of wealth, must be a science respecting human capacities and dispositions. But moral considerations have nothing to do with political economy. Therefore moral considerations have nothing to do with human capacities and dispositions. Footnote These statements sound crude in their brevity, but will be found of the utmost importance when they are developed. Thus in the above instance economists have never perceived that disposition to buy is a wholly moral element in demand. That is to say, when you give a man a half crown, it depends on his disposition whether he is rich or poor with it, whether he will buy disease, ruin and hatred, or buy health, advancement and domestic love. And thus the agreeableness or exchange value of every offered commodity depends on production, not merely of the commodity, but of buyers of it. Therefore on the education of buyers, and on all the moral elements by which their disposition to buy, this or that is formed. I will illustrate and expand into final consequences every one of these definitions in its place. At present they can only be given with extremist brevity, for in order to put the subject at once in a connected form before the reader, I have thrown into one the opening definitions of four chapters, namely of that on value, Advilorum, on price, thirty pieces, on production, demeanor, and on economy, the law of the house. End Footnote I do not wholly like the look of this conclusion for Mr. Mill's statements. Let us try Mr. Ricardo's. Utility is not the measure of the exchangeable value, though it is absolutely essential to it. Chapter 1. Section 1. Essential in what degree, Mr. Ricardo? There may be greater and less degrees of utility. Meat, for instance, may be so good as to be fit for any one to eat, or so bad as to be fit for no one to eat. What is the exact degree of goodness which is essential to its exchangeable value, but not the measure of it? How good must the meat be in order to possess any exchangeable value, and how bad must it be? I wish this were a settled question in London markets in order to possess none. There appears to be some hitch, I think, in the working even of Mr. Ricardo's principles, but let him take his own example. Suppose that in the early stages of society the bows and arrows of the hunter were of equal value with the implements of the fisherman. Under such circumstances the value of the deer, the produce of the hunter's day's labor, would be exactly equal to the value of the fish, the product of the fisherman's day's labor. The comparative value of the fish and game would be entirely regulated by the quantity of labor realized in each. Ricardo. Chapter 3. On Value. Indeed, therefore if the fisherman catches one sprat and the huntsman one deer, one sprat will be equal in value to one deer, but if the fisherman catches no sprat and the huntsman two deer, no sprat will be equal in value to two deer? Nay, but Mr. Ricardo's supporters may say, he means on an average. If the average product of a day's work of fisher and hunter be one fish and one deer, the one fish will always be equal in value to the one deer. Might I inquire the species of fish, whale, or whale-bait? Footnote. Perhaps it may be said in farther support of Mr. Ricardo that he meant when the utility is constant or given the price varies as the quantity of labor. If he meant this he should have said it, but had he meant it he could hardly have missed the necessary result, that utility would be one measure of price which he expressly denies it to be, and that to prove saleableness he had to prove a quantity of utility as well as a given quantity of labor, to wit his own instance that the deer and fish would each feed the same number of men for the same number of days with equal pleasure to their pallets. The fact is he did not know what he meant himself. The general idea which he had derived from commercial experience without being able to recognize it was that when the demand is constant the price varies as the quantity of labor required for the production, or using the formula I gave in the last paper when y is constant x y varies as x. But demand never is nor can be ultimately constant. If x varies distinctly for as price rises consumers fall away, and as soon as there is a monopoly and all scarcity is a form of monopoly so that every commodity is affected occasionally by some color of monopoly, y becomes the most influential condition of the price. Thus the price of a painting depends less on its merits than on the interest taken in it by the public, the price of singing less on the labor of the singer than the number of persons who desire to hear him, and the price of gold less on the scarcity which affects it in common with ceridium or eridium, than on the sun-lit color and unalterable purity by which it attracts the admiration and answers the trust of mankind. It must be kept in mind, however, that I use the word demand in a somewhat different sense from economists usually. They mean by it the quantity of a thing sold. I mean by it the force of the buyer's capable intention to buy. In good English a person's demand signifies not what he gets, but what he asks for. Economists do not notice that objects are not valued by absolute bulk or weight, but by such bulk and weight as is necessary to bring them into use. They say, for instance, that water bears no price in the market. It is true that a cupful does not, but a lake does, just as a handful of dust does not, but an acre does. And were it possible to make even the possession of the cupful or handful permanent, i.e., to find a place for them, the earth and sea would be bought up for handfuls and cupfuls. End footnote. It would be a waste of time to purpose these fallacies farther. We will seek for a true definition. Such store has been set for centuries upon the use of our English classical education. It were to be wished that our well-educated merchants recall to mind always this much of their Latin schooling, that the nominative of valorum, a word already sufficiently familiar to them, is valor, a word which, therefore, ought to be familiar to them. Valor from Valere to be well or strong, strong in life if a man or valiant, strong for life if a thing or valuable, to be valuable, therefore, is to avail towards life. A truly valuable or availing thing is that which leads to life with its whole strength. In proportion as it does not lead to life or as its strength is broken, it is less valuable. In proportion as it leads away from life, it is unvaluable or malignant. The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opium and of quantity. Think what you will of it, gain how much you may of it, the value of the thing itself is neither greater nor less. Forever it avails or avails not, no estimate can raise, no disdain repress, the power which it holds from the maker of things and men. The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science as medicine from witchcraft and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that lead to life, and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy, they supposed indifferent things, such as excrances of shellfish and pieces of blue and red stone, to be valuable, and spent large measures of the labor which ought to be employed for the extension and ennobling of life in diving or digging for them, and cutting them into various shapes, or if, in the same state of infancy, they imagine precious and beneficial things, such as air, light, and cleanliness to be valueless, or if, finally, they imagine the conditions of their own existence, by which alone they can truly possess or use anything, such, for instance, as peace, trust, and love, to be prudently exchangeable, when the markets offer, for gold, iron, or excrances of shells, the great and only science of political economy teaches them, in all these cases, what is vanity, and what substance, and how the service of death, the Lord of Waste, and of eternal emptiness, differs from the service of wisdom, the Lady of Saving, and of eternal fullness. She who has said, I will cause those that love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures. The Lady of Saving, in a profounder sense, than that of the Savings Bank, though that is a good one, Madonna della Salute, Lady of Health, which, though commonly spoken of as if separate from wealth, is indeed a part of wealth. This word, wealth, it will be remembered, is the next we have to define. To be wealthy, says Mr. Mill, is to have a large stock of useful articles. I accept this definition. Only let us perfectly understand it. My opponents often lament my not giving them enough logic. I fear I must at present use a little more than they will like. But this business of political economy is no light one, and we must allow no loose terms in it. We have, therefore, to ascertain in the above definition, first, what is the meaning of having or the nature of possession, then, what is the meaning of useful or the nature of utility? And first of possession. At the crossing of the transeps of Milan Cathedral Heslane, for three hundred years, the embalmed body of St. Carlo Bormio. It holds a golden croissier, and has a cross of emeralds upon its breast. Admitting the croissier and emeralds to be useful articles, is the body to be considered as having them? Do they, in the politico-economical sense of property, belong to it? If not, and if we may therefore conclude generally that a dead body cannot possess property, what degree and period of animation in the body will render possession possible? And thus, lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking, hath he the gold or had the gold him? Footnote. Compare George Herbert, the church porch, stanza twenty-eight, and footnote. And if, instead of sinking him in the sea by its weight, the gold had struck him on the forehead, and thereby caused incurable disease, suppose palsy or insanity, would the gold in that case have been more a possession than in the first? Without pressing the inquiry up through instances of gradually increasing vital power over the gold, which I will, however, give if they are asked for, I presume the reader will see that possession or having is not an absolute, but a gradated power, and consists not only in the quantity or nature of the thing possessed, but also in a greater degree in its suitableness to the person possessing it, and in his vital power to use it. And our definition of wealth expanded becomes the possession of useful articles which we can use. This is a very serious change. For wealth, instead of depending merely on a have, is thus seen to depend on a can. Gladiator's death on a habit, but soldier's victory and state's salvation, on a quapurum imposit. LIV. SEVEN. SIX. And what we reasoned of not only as accumulation of material is seen to demand also accumulation of capacity. So much for our verb. Next for our adjective. What is the meaning of useful? The inquiry is closely connected with the last. For what is capable of use in the hands of some persons is capable in the hands of others of the opposite of use, called commonly from use or abuse. And it depends on the person, much more than on the article, whether its usefulness or abusefulness will be the quality developed in it. Thus wine, which the Greeks in their Bacchus made rightly the type of all passion, and which when used cheereth God and man, that is to say strengthens both the divine life or reasoning power and the earthy or carnal power of man, yet when abused becomes Dionysus, hurtful especially to the divine part of man or reason. And again the body itself, being equally liable to use and to abuse, and when rightly disciplined serviceable to the state, both for war and labor, but not when disciplined or abused valueless to the state, and capable only of continuing the private or single existence of the individual, and that but feebly, the Greeks called such a body an idiotic or private body from their words signifying a person employed in no way directly useful to the state, when it's finally our idiot, meaning a person entirely occupied with his own concerns. Hence it follows that if a thing is to be useful, it must not be only of an availing nature but in availing hands, or in accurate terms, usefulness is value in the hands of the valiant, so that this science of wealth being, as we have just seen, when regarded as the science of accumulation, accumulative of capacity as well as of material, when regarded as the science of distribution, as distribution is not absolute but discriminant, not of everything to every man but of the right thing to the right man, a difficult science dependent on more than arithmetic. Wealth, therefore, is the possession of the valuable by the valiant, and in considering it as a power existing in the nation, the two elements, the value of the thing and the valor of its possessor, must be estimated together. Once it appears that many of the persons commonly considered wealthy are in reality no more wealthy than the locks of their own strongboxes are, they being inherently and eternally incapable of wealth and operating for the nation, in an economical point of view, either as pools of dead water and eddies in a stream, which so long as the stream flows are useless or serve only to drown people but may become of importance in a state of stagnation should the stream dry, or else as dams in a river of which the ultimate service depends not on the dam but the miller, or else as mere accidental stays and impediments acting not as wealth, for we ought to have a correspondent term as ilth, causing various devastations and of trouble around them in all directions, or lastly act not at all but are merely animated conditions of delay, no use being possible of anything they have until they are dead, in which condition they are nevertheless often useful as delays and impedimentia if a nation is apt to move too fast. This being so, the difficulty of the true science of political economy lies not merely in the need of developing manly character to deal with material value, but in the fact that, while the manly character and material value only form wealth by their conjunction, they have nevertheless a mutually destructive operation on each other, for the manly character is apt to ignore or even cast away the material value, whence that of hope, sure of qualities demanding praise, more go to ruin fortunes than to raise. And on the other hand, the material value is apt to undermine the manly character, so that it must be our work in the issue to examine what evidence there is of the effect of wealth on the minds of its possessor. Also, what kind of person it is who usually sets himself to obtain wealth, and succeeds in doing so, and whether the world owes more gratitude to rich or poor men, either for their moral influence upon it, or for chief goods, discoveries, and practical advancements? I may, however, anticipate future conclusions, so far as to state that in a community regulated only by laws of demand and supply, but protected from open violence, the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just and godly person. Weaken the grand words to lean on the preceding ones. End footnote. Thus far than of wealth. Next we have to ascertain the nature of price, that is to say, of exchange value and its expression by currencies. Note first of exchange. There can be no profit in it. It is only in labor that there can be profit, that is to say, a making in advance, or making in favor of, from proficio. In exchange there is only advantage, i.e., a bringing of vantage or power over the exchanging persons. Thus one man, by sewing and reaping, turns one measure of corn into two measures. That is profit. Another, by digging and forging, turns one spade into two spades. That is profit. But the man who has two measures of corn wants sometimes to dig, and the man who has two spades wants sometimes to eat. They exchange the gained grain for the gained tool, and both are the better for the exchange. But though there is much advantage in the transaction, there is no profit. Nothing is constructed or produced. Only that which had been before constructed is given to the person by whom it can be used. If labor is necessary to affect the exchange, that labor is, in reality, involved in the production, and, like all other labor, bears profit. More number of men are concerned in the manufacturer or in the conveyance have a share in the profit. But neither the manufacturer nor the conveyance are the exchange, and in the exchange itself there is no profit. There may, however, be acquisition, which is a very different thing. If in the exchange one man is able to give what cost him little labor for what has cost the other much, he acquires a certain quantity of the produce of the other's labor. And precisely what he acquires the other loses. In mercantile language, the person who thus acquires is commonly said to have made a profit. And I believe that many of our merchants are seriously under the impression that it is possible for everybody, somehow, to make a profit in this manner. Whereas by the unfortunate constitution of the world we live in, the laws both of matter and motion have quite rigorously forbidden universal acquisition of this kind. Profit, or material gain, is attainable only by construction, or by discovery, not by exchange. Whenever material gain follows exchange, for every plus there is a precisely equal minus. Unhappily for the progress of the science of political economy, the plus quantities, or, if I may be allowed to coin an awkward plural, the pluses, make a very positive and venerable appearance in the world, so that everyone is eager to learn the science which produces results so magnificent. Whereas the minuses have, on the other hand, a tendency to retire into back streets, and other places of shade, or even to get themselves wholly and finally put out of sight in graves, which renders the algebra of this science peculiar, and difficultly legible, a large number of its negative signs being written by the accountkeeper in a kind of red ink, which starvation thins and makes strangely pale, or even quite invisible ink for the present. The science of exchange, or, as I hear it has been proposed to call it, of catalactics, considered as one of gain, is therefore simply nougatory, but considered as one of acquisition, it is a very curious science, differing in its data and basis from every other science known. Thus, if I can exchange a needle with a savage for a diamond, my power of doing so depends either on the savage's ignorance of social arrangements in Europe, or on his want of power to take advantage of them, by selling the diamond to anyone else for more needles. If farther I make the bargain as completely advantageous to myself as possible, by giving the savage a needle with no eye in it, reaching, thus a sufficiently satisfactory type of the perfect operation of catalactic science, the advantage to me in the entire transaction depends wholly upon the ignorance, powerlessness, or heedlessness of the person dealt with. Do away with these, and catalactic advantage becomes impossible. So far, therefore, as the science of exchange relates to the advantage of one of the exchanging persons only, it is founded on the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite person. Where these vanish, it also vanishes. It is therefore a science founded in nicheance, and an art founded on artlessness. But all other sciences and arts, except this, have for their object the doing away with their opposite nicheance and artlessness. This science alone of sciences must, by all available means, promulgate and prolong its opposite nicheance. Therefore, the science itself is impossible. It is, therefore, peculiarly and alone the science of darkness, probably a bastard science, not by any means a divina scientia, but one begotten of another father, that father who, advising his children to turn stones into bread, is himself employed in turning bread into stones, and who, if you ask a fish of him, fish not being producible on his estate, can but give you a serpent. The general law, then, respecting just or economical exchange is simply this. There must be advantage on both sides, or, if only advantage on one, at least no disadvantage on the other, to the persons exchanging, and just payment for his time, intelligence, and labor to any intermediate person affecting the transaction, commonly called a merchant, and whatever advantage there is on either side, and whatever pay is given to the intermediate person, should be thoroughly known to all concerned. All attempt at concealment implies some practice of the opposite, or undivide science, founded on nicheance. Whence another saying of the Jew merchants? As a nail between the stone joints, so doth sin stick fast between buying and selling. Which peculiar riveting of stone and timber, in men's dealings with each other, is again set forth in the house which was to be destroyed, timber and stones together, when Zechariah's soul, more probably curved sword, flew over it, the curse that goeth forth over all the earth upon every one that stealeth and holdeth himself guiltless, instantly followed by the vision of the great measure, the measure of the injustice of them in all the earth, with the weight of lead for its lid, and the woman, the spirit of wickedness within it. That is to say, wickedness hidden by dullness, and formalized outwardly into ponderously established cruelty. It shall be set upon its own base in the land of Babel. Zechariah 5 verse 11. I have hitherto carefully restricted myself, in speaking of exchange, to the use of the term Advantage, but that term includes two ideas—the Advantage, namely, of getting what we need, and that of getting what we wish for. Three-fourths of the demands existing in the world are romantic, founded on visions, idealisms, hopes and affections, and the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, regulation of the imagination and the heart. Hence the right discussion of the nature of price is a very high metaphysical and psychical problem, sometimes to be resolved only in a passionate manner, as by David in his counting the price of the water of the well by the gate of Bethlehem, but its first conditions are the following. The price of anything is the quantity of labor given by the person desiring it, in order to obtain possession of it. This price depends on four variable quantities—A, the quantity of which the purchaser has for the thing, opposed to A, the quantity of which the seller has to keep it, B, the quantity of labor the purchaser can afford to obtain the thing opposed to B, the quantity of labor the seller can afford to keep it. These quantities are operative only in excess, i.e., the quantity of which A means the quantity of which for this thing, above which for other things, and the quantity of work B means the quantity which can be spared to get this thing from the quantity needed to get other things. Phenomenoff price, therefore, are intensely complex, curious, and interesting—too complex, however, to be examined yet. Every one of them, when traced far enough, showing itself at last as a part of the bargain of the poor of the flock, or flock of slaughter, if you think good, give me my price, and if not forbear, Zachariah 11, verse 12, but as the price of everything is to be calculated finally in labor, it is necessary to define the nature of that standard. Labor is the contest of the life of man with an opposite. The term life included his intellect, soul, and physical power, contending with question, difficulty, trial, or material force. Labor is of a higher or lower order, as it includes more or fewer of the elements of life, and labor of good quality in any kind includes always as much intellect and feeling as will fully and harmoniously regulate the physical force. In speaking of the value and price of labor, it is necessary always to understand labor of a given rank and quality, as we should speak of gold or silver of a given standard. Bad, that is, heartless, inexperienced, or senseless labor cannot be valued. It is like gold of uncertain alloy or flawed iron. Labor which is entirely good of its kind, that is to say effective or efficient, the Greeks called wayable, translated usually as worthy, and because thus substantial and true, they called its price the honorable estimate of it. Honorarium, this word being founded on their conception of true labor as a divine thing, to be honored with the kind of honor given to the gods, whereas the price of false labor, or of that which led away from life, was to be not honor but vengeance, for which they reserved another word, attributing the exaction of such a price to peculiar goddess, called to syphony, the requiter, or Quitten's taker of death, a person versed in the highest branches of arithmetic and punctual in her habits, with whom accounts current have been opened also in modern days. End footnote. And to this last, Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy by John Ruskin, essay four, Ad Valorum, part two. The quality and kind of labor being given, its value, like that of all other valuable things, is invariable. But the quantity of it which must be given for other things is variable, and in estimating this variation, the price of other things must always be counted by the quantity of labor, not the price of labor by the quantity of other things. Thus, if we want to plant an apple sapling in rocky ground, it may take two hours' work. In soft ground, perhaps only half an hour. Grant the soil equally good for the tree in each case. Then the value of the sapling planted by two hours' work is no wise greater than that of the sapling planted in half an hour. One will bear no more fruit than the other. So one half hour of work is as valuable as another half hour. Nevertheless, the one sapling has cost four such pieces of work, the other only one. Now the proper statement of this fact is, not that the labor on the hard ground is cheaper than on the soft, but that the tree is dearer. The exchange value may, or may not, afterwards depend on this fact. If other people have plenty of soft ground to plant in, they will take no cognizance of our two hours' labor. And the price they will offer for the plant on the rock. And if, through want of sufficient botanical science, we have planted an upus tree instead of an apple, the exchange value will be a negative quantity, still less proportionate to the labor expended. What is commonly called Cheapness of Labor signifies, therefore, in reality that many obstacles have to be overcome by it, so that much labor is required to produce a small result. But this should never be spoken of as Cheapness of Labor, as it is dearness of the object wrought for. It would be just as rational to say that walking was Cheap, because we had ten miles to walk home to our dinner, as that labor was Cheap, because we had to work ten hours to earn it. The last word which we have to define is Production. I have hitherto spoken of all labor as profitable, because it is impossible to consider under one head the quality or value of labor and its aim. But labor of the best quality must be various in aim. It may be either constructive, gathering from Khan and Stru, as agriculture, nougatory as jewel cutting, or destructive, scattering from D and Stru, as war. It is not, however, always to prove labor, apparently nougatory, to be actually so. Generally the formula holds good, he that gathereth not, scattereth. Thus the jeweler's art is probably very harmful in its ministering to a clumsy and inelegant pride. Footnote. The most nougatory labor is, perhaps, that of which not enough is given to answer a purpose effectually, and which therefore has to be done over again. Also labor which fails of effect through non-cooperation. The curate of a little village near Belanzona, to whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that they would not join to build an effectual embankment high up the valley, because everybody said that it would help his neighbors as much as himself. So every proprietor built a bit of low embankment about his own field, and the Ticino, as soon as it had in mind, swept away and swallowed all up together. End footnote. So that, finally, I believe nearly all labor may be shortly divided into positive and negative labor, positive, that which produces life, negative, that which produces death, the most directly negative labor being murder, and the most directly positive, the bearing and rearing of children. So that in the precise degree in which murder is hateful on the negative side of idleness, in the exact degree child rearing is admirable on the positive side of idleness. For which reason, and because of the honor that there is in rearing children, while the wife is said to be as the vine for cheering, the children are as the olive branch for praise, are for praise only, but for peace, because large families can only be reared in times of peace. Though since in their spreading and voyaging in various directions they distribute strength, they are to the home strength as arrives in the land of a giant, striking here and there far away. Footnote. Observe, I say, rearing, not begetting. It is strange that men always praise enthusiastically any person who, by a momentary exertion, saves a life. But praise very hesitatingly a person who, by exertion and self-denial, prolonged through years, creates one. We give the crown obsibum servitum, why not obsibum netum? Born, I mean, to the full, in soul as well as body. England has oak enough, I think, for both chaplets. Labor, being thus various in its result, the prosperity of any nation is in exact proportion to the quantity of labor which it spends in obtaining and employing means of life. Observe, I say, obtaining and employing. That is to say, not merely wisely producing, but wisely distributing and consuming. Economists usually speak as if there were no good in consumption. Absolute. Footnote. When Mr. Mill speaks of productive consumption, he only means consumption which results in increase of capital or material wealth. See one, three, four, and one, three, five. End footnote. So far from this being so, consumption absolute is the end, crown, and perfection of production, and wise consumption is a far more difficult art than wise production. Twenty people can gain money for one who can use it, and the vital question for individual and for nation is never how much do they make, but to what purpose do they spend? The reader may perhaps have been surprised at the slight reference I have hitherto made to capital and its functions. It is here the place to define them. Capital signifies head or source or root material. It is material by which some derivative or secondary good is produced. It is only capital proper, capit vivum, not capit mortuum, when it is thus producing something different from itself. It is a root which does not enter into vital function till it produces something else than a root, namely fruit. That fruit will in time again produce roots, and so all living capital issues in reproduction of capital. But capital which produces nothing but capital is only root practicing root. Bulb issuing in bulb, never in tulip. Seed issuing in seed, never in bread. The political economy of Europe has hitherto devoted itself wholly to the multiplication, or less even the aggregation of bulbs. It never saw nor conceived such a thing as a tulip. Nay, boiled bulbs they might have been. Glass bulbs, Prince Rupert's drops, consummated in powder, well, if it were glass powder and not gun powder, for any end or meaning the economist had in defining the laws of aggregation. We will try and get a clearer notion of them. The best and simplest general type of capital is a well-made plowshare. Now if that plowshare did nothing but beget other plowshares in a polypous manner, however the great cluster of polypous plow might glitter in the sun, it would have lost its function of capital. It becomes true capital only by another kind of splendor, when it is seen, splendis air silco, to grow bright in the furrow rather with diminution of its substance than addition by the noble friction. And the true home question to every capitalist and to every nation is not how many plows have you, but where are your furrows, not how quickly will this capital reproduce itself, but what will it do during reproduction? What substance will it furnish good for life? What work construct protective of life? If none its own reproduction is useless. If worse than none, for capital may destroy life as well as support it, its own reproduction is worse than useless, it is merely an advance from Tosiphony on mortgage, not a profit by any means. Not a profit, as the ancients truly saw, and showed in the type of Ixian, for capital is the head or fountain head of wealth, and the well-head of wealth, as the clouds are the well-heads of rain. But when clouds are without water and beget only clouds, they issue in wrath at last, instead of rain, and in lightning, instead of harvest. Whence Ixian is said first to have invited his guests to a banquet, and then made them fall into a pit, as also Demis's silver mine, after which to show the rage of riches passing from lust of pleasure to lust of power, yet power is not truly understood. Ixian is said to have desired Juno, and instead embracing a cloud, or phantasm, to have begotten the centaurs. The power of mere wealth being in itself as the embrace of a shadow, comfortless. So also Ephraim feedeth on wind, and followeth after the east wind, or that which is not, Proverbs 23.5. And again Dante's Ixian, the type of avaricious fraud, as he flies, gathers the air up with retractal claws, l'er asere close. But in its offspring, a mingling of the brutal with the human nature, human in sagacity, using both intellect and arrow, but brutal in its body and hoof, for consuming and trampling down. So also in the vision of the woman bearing the effef. Before quoted, the wind was in their wings, not wings of a stork as an hour version, but milvy of a kite in the vulgate, or perhaps more accurately still, in the Septuagint. Pupo, a bird connected typically with the power of riches by many traditions, of which that of its petition for a crest of gold is perhaps the most interesting. The birds of Aristophanes, in which its part is principal, are full of them. Note especially the fortification of the air with baked bricks, like Babylon I, 550, and again compare the Plutus of Dante, who, to show the influence of riches in destroying the reason, is the only one of the powers of the inferno who cannot speak intelligibly, and also the cowardliest. He is not merely quelled or restrained, but literally collapses at a word, the sudden and helpless operation of mercantile panic being all told in the brief metaphor, as the sails swollen with the wind fall when the mast breaks. End footnote. For which sin Ixian is at last bound upon a wheel, fiery and tubed, and rolling perpetually in the air, the type of human labor when selfish and fruitless kept far into the Middle Ages in their wheels of fortune, the wheel which has in it no breath or spirit, but is whirled by chance only, whereas of all true work the Ezekiel vision is true, that the spirit of the living creature is in the wheels, and where angels go the wheels go by them, but move no otherwise. This being the real nature of capital it follows that there are two kinds of true production, always going on in an active state, one of seed and one of food, or production for the ground and for the mouth, both of which are by covetous persons thought to be production only for the grainery, whereas the function of the grainery is but intermediate and conservative, fulfilled in distribution, else it ends in nothing but mildew, and the nourishment of rats and worms. And since production for the ground is only useful with future hope of harvest, all essential production is for the mouth, and is finally measured by the mouth, hence as I said above consumption is the crown of production, and the wealth of a nation is only to be estimated by what it consumes. The want of any clear side of this fact is the capital error, issuing in rich interest and revenue of error among the political economists. Their minds are continually set on money gain, not on mouth gain, and they fall into every sort of net and snare, dazzled by the coin-glitter as birds by the fowler's glass, or rather, for there is not much else like birds in them, they are like children trying to jump on the heads of their own shadows, the money gain being only the shadow of the true gain which is humanity. The final object of political economy, therefore, is to get good methods of consumption and great quantity of consumption. In other words, to use everything and to use it nobly, whether it be substance, service, or service-perfecting substance. The most curious error in Mr. Mill's entire work, provided for him originally by Ricardo, is his endeavor to distinguish between direct and indirect service, and consequent assertion that a demand for commodities is not a demand for labor, one, nine, and forward. He distinguishes between laborers employed to lay out pleasure grounds and to manufacture velvet, declaring that it makes material difference to the laboring classes in which of these two ways a capitalist spends his money, because the employment of the gardeners is a demand for labor, but the purchase of velvet is not. The value of raw material, which has, indeed, to be deducted from the price of the labor, is not contemplated in the passages referred to, Mr. Mill having fallen into the mistake by pursuing the collateral results of the payment of wages to middlemen. He says, the consumer does not, with his own funds, pay the weaver for his day's work. Pardon me, the consumer of the velvet pays the weaver with his own funds as much as he pays the gardener. He pays, probably, an intermediate shipowner, velvet merchant, and shopman, pays carriage money, shop rent, damage money, time money, and care money. All these are above and beside the velvet price, just as the wages of a head gardener would be above the grass price. But the velvet is as much produced by the consumer's capital, though he does not pay for it till six months after production, as the grass is produced by his capital, though he does not pay the man who mowed it and rolled it on Monday till Saturday afternoon. I do not know if Mr. Mill's conclusion, the capital cannot be dispensed with, the purchasers can, page ninety-eight, has yet been reduced to practice in the city on any large scale. End footnote. Error colossal as well as strange. It will indeed make a difference to the laborer whether we bid him swing his sith in the spring winds, or drive the loom in pestilential air. But so far as his pocket is concerned, it makes to him absolutely no difference whether we order him to make green velvet with seed and a sith or red velvet with silk and scissors. Neither does it any wise concern him whether, when the velvet is made, we consume it by walking on it or wearing it, so long as our consumption of it is wholly selfish. But if our consumption is to be in any wise unselfish? Not only our mode of consuming the articles we require interests him, but also the kind of article we require with a view to consumption. As thus, returning for a moment to Mr. Mill's great hardware theory, it matters, so far as the laborer's immediate profit is concerned, not an iron filing whether I employ him in a growing a peach or forging a bombshell. But my probable mode of consumption of those articles matters seriously. Admit that it is to be in both cases unselfish, and the difference to him is final, whether when his child is ill I walk into his cottage and give it the peach, or drop the shell down his chimney and blow his roof off. Footnote. Which, I observe, is the precise opposite of the one under examination. The hardware theory required us to discharge our gardeners and engage manufacturers. The velvet theory requires us to discharge our manufacturers and engage gardeners. End footnote. The worst of it, for the peasant, is that the capitalist consumption of the peach is apt to be selfish, and of the shell distributive, but in all cases, this is the broad and general fact, that on due, catalactic commercial principles somebody's roof must go off in fulfillment of the bomb's destiny. You may grow for your neighbor at your liking, grapes or grape shot. He will also, catalytically, grow grapes or grape shot for you, and you will each reap what you have sown. Footnote. It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe, that it is entirely capitalist's wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them, for most of the men who wage such wage them gratis, but for an unjust war men's bodies and souls have both to be bought, and the best tools of war for them besides, which makes such war costly to the maximum, not to speak of the cost of base fear and angry suspicion between nations which have not graced nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with, as at present, France and England, purchasing of each other ten million sterling worth of consternation annually, a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the science of the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth. And all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalist, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalist's will being the primary root of the war, but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person. End footnote. It is, therefore, the manner and issue of consumption which are the real tests of production. Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable, and the question for the nation is not how much labor it employs, but how much life it produces, for as consumption is the end and aim of production, so life is the end and aim of consumption. I left this question to the reader's thought two months ago, choosing rather that he should work it out for himself than have it sharply stated to him. But now the ground being sufficiently broken and the details into which the several questions here opened must lead us, being too complex for discussion in the pages of a periodical, so that I must pursue them elsewhere, I desire in closing the series of introductory papers to leave this one great fact clearly stated. There is no wealth but life. Life including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings. That man is richest too, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. A strange political economy, the only one, nevertheless, that ever was or can be. All political economy founded on self-interest, being but the fulfillment of that which once brought schism into the policy of angels, and ruin into the economy of heaven. Footnote. In all reasoning about prices, the Proviso must be understood, supposing all parties to take care of their own interest. Mill. Three. One. Five. End footnote. The greatest number of human beings noble and happy. But is the nobleness consistent with the number? Yes, not only consistent with it, but essential to it. The maximum of life can only be reached by the maximum of virtue. In this respect the law of human population differs wholly from that of animal life. The multiplication of animals is checked only by want of food, and by the hostility of races. The population of the nat is restrained by the hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow by the scarcity of gnats. Man considered as an animal is indeed limited by the same laws. Hunger or plague or war are the necessary and only restraints upon his increase. Effectual restraints hither, too. His principle study having been how most swiftly to destroy himself, or ravage his dwelling-places, and his highest skill directed to give range to the famine, seed to the plague, and sway to the sword. But as considered other than an animal his increase is not limited by these laws. It is limited only by the limits of his courage and his love. Both of these have their bounds, and ought to have. His race has its bounds also, but these have not yet been reached, nor will be reached for ages. In all the ranges of human thought I know none so melancholy as the speculations of political economists on the population question. It is proposed to better the conditions of the laborer by giving him higher wages. Nay, says the economist, if you raise his wages he will either people down to the same point of misery at which you found him, or drink your wages away. He will, I know it. Who gave him this will? Suppose it were your own son of whom you spoke, declaring to me that you dared not take him into your firm, nor even give him his just laborer's wages, because if you did he would die of drunkenness and leave half a score of children to the parish. Who gave your son these dispositions, I should inquire? Has he them by inheritance or by education? By one or the other they must come, and as in him so also in the poor. Either these poor are of a race essentially different from ours, and unredeemable, which, however, often implied, I have heard none yet openly say, or else by such care as we have ourselves received we may make them continent and sober as ourselves, wise and dispassionate as we are models arduous of imitation. But it is answered they cannot receive education. Why not? That is precisely the point at issue. Charitable persons suppose the worst fault of the rich is to refuse the people meat, and the people cry for their meat, kept back by fraud to the lord of the multitudes. Alas, it is not meat of which the refusal is cruelest, or to which the claim is validest. The life is more than the meat. The rich not only refuse food to the poor, they refuse wisdom, they refuse virtue, they refuse salvation. Ye sheep without shepherd it is not the pastor that has been shut from you but the presence. Meat! Perhaps your right to that may be pleatable, but other rights have to be pleaded first. Claim your crumbs from the table, if you will, but claim them as children, not as dogs. Claim your right to be fed, but claim more loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and pure. footnote James verse 4 Observe in these statements I am not talking up, nor countencing one wit, the common socialist idea of division of property. Division of property is its destruction, and with it the destruction of all hope, all industry, and all justice. It is simply chaos, a chaos towards which the believers in modern political economy are fast-tending, and from which I am striving to save them. The rich man does not keep back meat from the poor by retaining his riches, but by basely using them. Riches are a form of strength, and a strong man does not injure others by keeping his strength, but by using it injuriously. The socialist, seeing a strong man oppress a weak one, cries out, break the strong man's arms, but I say, teach him to use them to better purpose. The fortitude and intelligence which acquire riches are intended by the giver of both not to scatter, nor to give away, but to employ those riches in the service of mankind. In other words, in the redemption of the airing and the aid of the weak. That is to say, there is first to be the work to gain money, then the sabbath of use for it. The sabbath whose law is not to lose life but to save. It is continually the fault or the folly of the poor that they are poor, as it is usually a child's fault if it falls into a pond, and a cripple's weakness that he slips at a crossing. Nevertheless, most pastors by would pull the child out, or help up the cripple. Put it at the worst that all the poor of the world are but disobedient children, or careless cripples, and that all rich people are wise and strong, and you will see at once that neither is the socialist right in desiring to make everybody poor, powerless and foolish as he is himself, nor the rich man right in leaving the children in the mire. End footnote. Strange words to be used of working people. What, holy, without any long robes nor anointing oils, these rough-jacketed, rough-worded persons set to nameless and dishonored service? These, with dim eyes and cramped limbs and slowly wakening minds? Pure, these with sensual desire and groveling thought, foul of body and coarse of soul? It may be so, nevertheless, such as they are, they are the holiest, perfectest, purest persons the earth can at present show. They may be what you have said, but if so, they are yet holier than we who have left them thus. But what can be done for them? Who can clothe, who teach, who restrain their multitudes? What end can there be for them at last but to consume one another? I hope for another end, though not indeed for many of the three remedies for overpopulation commonly suggested by economists. These three are, in brief, colonization, bringing in of waste lands, or discouragement of marriage. The first and second of these expedients merely evade or delay the question. It will indeed be long before the world has been all colonized, and its deserts all brought under cultivation. But the radical question is not how much habitable land is in the world, but how many human beings ought to be maintained on a given space of habitable land. Observe, I say, ought to be, not how many can be. Ricardo, with his usual inaccuracy, defines what he calls the natural rate of wages, as that which will maintain the laborer. Maintain him? Yes, but how? The question was instantly thus asked of me by a working girl to whom I read the passage. I will amplify her question for her. Maintain him how? As first to what length of life? Out of a given number of fed persons, how many are to be old? How many young? That is to say, will you arrange their maintenance so as to kill them early, say at thirty or thirty-five on the average, including deaths of weakly or ill-fed children, or so as to enable them to live out a natural life? You will feed a greater number, in the first case, by rapidity of secession, probably a happier number in the second. Which does Mr. Ricardo mean to be their natural state? And to which state belongs the natural rate of wages? Footnote. The quantity of life is the same in both cases, but it is differently allotted. End footnote. Again, a piece of land which will only support ten idle, ignorant, and unprovident persons will support thirty or forty intelligent and industrious ones. Which of these is their natural state, and to which of them belongs the natural rate of wages? Again, if a piece of land supports forty persons in industrious ignorance, and if, tired of this ignorance, they set apart ten of their number to study the properties of cones and the sizes of stars, the labor of these ten, being withdrawn from the ground, must either tend to the increase of food in some transitional manner, or the person set apart for sidereal and conic purposes must starve, or else someone else starve instead of them. What is, therefore, the natural rate of wages of the scientific persons, and how does this rate relate to or measure their reverted or transitional productiveness? Again, if the ground maintains, at first, forty laborers in a peaceable and pious state of mind, but they become in a few years so quarrelsome and impious that they have to set apart five to mediate upon and settle their disputes, ten armed to the teeth with costly instruments, to enforce the decisions, and five to remind everybody in an eloquent manner of the existence of a God, what will be the result upon the general power of production, and what is the natural rate of wages of the meditative, muscular, and oracular laborers? Leaving these questions to be discussed or waved at their pleasure by Mr. Ricardo's followers, I proceed to state the main facts bearing on that probable future of the laboring classes which has been partially glanced at by Mr. Mill. That chapter and the preceding one differ from the common writing of political economists in admitting some value in the aspect of nature, and expressing regret at the probability of the destruction of natural scenery. But we may spare our anxieties on this head. Men can neither drink steam nor eat stone. The maximum of population on a given space of land implies also the relative maximum of edible vegetable, whether for men or cattle, it implies a maximum of pure air and of pure water, therefore a maximum of wood to transmute the air and of sloping ground protected by herbage from the extreme heat of the sun to feed the streams. All England may, if it so chooses, become one manufacturing town, and Englishmen sacrificing themselves to the good of general humanity may live diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and of deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a factory nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever make iron digestible by the million, nor substitute hydrogen for wine. Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever feed them, and however the apple of Sodom and the grape of Gomorrah may spread their table for a time with dainties of ashes and nectar of asps. So long as men live by bread, the far away valleys must laugh as they are covered with the gold of God and the shouts of his happy multitudes ring round the wine press and the well. Nor need our more sentimental economists fear the too widespread of the formalities of mechanical agriculture. The presence of a wise population implies the search for felicity as well as for food. Nor can any population reach its maximum but through that wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth. The desert has its appointed place and work. The eternal engine whose beam is the earth's axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath is its ocean, will still divide imperiously to their desert kingdoms, bound with unfurlable rock and swept by unarrested sand, their powers of frost and fire, but the zones and lands between habitable will be loveliest in habitation. The desire of the heart is also the light of the eyes. No scene is continually and untiringly loved. But one rich by joyful human labor, smooth in field, fair in garden, full and orchard, trims sweet and frequent in homestead, ringing with voices of vivid existence. No air is sweet that is silent. It is only sweet when full of low currents of undersound, triplets of birds and murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words of men, and wayward trebles of childhood. As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary, the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn, and the wild birds and creatures of the by every wondrous word and unknowable work of God. Happy in that he knew them not, nor did his fathers know, and that round about him reaches into the infinite the amazement of his existence. Note finally that all effectual advancement towards this true felicity of the human race must be by individual, not public effort. Certain general measures may aid, certain revised laws guide such advancement, but the measure and law which have first to be determined are those of each man's home. We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to complaining neighbors, usually less well-placed in the world than themselves, that they should remain content in the station in which Providence has placed them. There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good one, but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbor should or should not remain content with his position is not your business, but it is very much your business to remain content with your own. What is chiefly needed in England at the present day is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek not greater wealth, but simple pleasure, not higher fortune, but deeper felicity, making the first of possessions, self-possession, honoring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. Of which lowly peace it is written that justice and peace have kissed each other, and that the fruit of justice is sown in peace of them that make peace, not peacemakers in the common understanding, reconcilers of quarrels, though that function also follows on the greater one, but peace-creators, givers of calm, which you cannot give unless you first gain, nor is this gain one which will follow assuredly on any course of business, commonly so called. No form of gain is less probable, business being, as is shown in the language of all nations, venere, vendre, and vino, from venio, essentially restless and probably contentious, having a raven-like mind to the motion, to and fro, as to the carry in food, whereas the olive-feeding and baring birds look for rest for their feet. Thus it is said of wisdom that she hath build at her house, and hewn out her seven pillars, and even when, though apt to wait long at the doorposts, she has to leave her house and go abroad, her paths are peace also. For us, at all events, her work must begin at the entry of the doors. All true economy is law of the house. Strive to make that law strict, simple, generous, waste nothing and grudge nothing, care in no wise to make more of money, but care to make much of it, remembering always the great, palpable, inevitable fact, the rule and root of all economy, that what one person has another cannot have, and that every atom of substance of whatever kind used or consumed is so much human life spent, which, if it issue in the saving present life, or gaining more, is well spent, but if not, is either so much life prevented or so much slain. In all buying, consider first what condition of existence you cause in the producers of what you buy. Secondly, whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer and in due proportion, lodged in his hands. Thirdly, to how much clear use for food, knowledge or joy, this that you have bought can be put. And fourthly, to whom and in what way can it be most speedily and serviceably distributed? In all dealings whatsoever, insisting on entire openness and stern fulfillment, and in all doings on perfection and loveliness of accomplishment, especially on fineness and purity of all marketable commodity. Watching at the same time for all ways of gaining or teaching, powers of simple pleasure, and of showing the sum of enjoyment depending not on the quantity of things tasted, but on the vivacity and patience of taste. Footnote, the proper offices of middlemen, namely overseers or authoritative workmen, conveyances, merchants, sailors, retail dealers, et cetera, and order takers, persons employed to receive directions from the consumer, must of course be examined before I can enter farther into the question of just payment of the first producer. But I have not spoken of them in these introductory papers because the evils attendant on the abuse of such intermediate functions result not from any alleged principle of modern political economy, but from private carelessness or iniquity. End footnote. And if on due and honest thought over these things, it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may for some time at least not be a luxurious one, consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future, innocent and exquisite, luxury for all, and by the help of all, but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant, and the cruelest man living could not sit at his feasts unless he sat blindfolded. Raise the veil boldly, face the light, and if as yet the light of the eye can only be through tears and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time come and the kingdom when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace shall be unto this last as unto thee. And when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home and calm economy where the wicked cease, not from trouble but from troubling and the weary are at rest. End of essay four, part two, from unto this last. End of unto this last by John Ruskin.