For my part, I will endeavor to be more and more
simple and clear.
Everything which can be of any service to me is of value to me,
and the more abundant the useful thing is the richer I am: so
far there is no difficulty. Milk and flesh, fruits and grains,
wool, sugar, cotton, wine, metals, marble; in fact, land, water,
air, fire, and sunlight,-- are, relatively to me, values of use,
values by nature and function. If all the things which serve to
sustain my life were as abundant as certain of them are, light
for instance,--in other words, if the quantity of every valuable
thing was inexhaustible,--my welfare would be forever assured: I
should not have to labor; I should not even think. In such a
state, things would always be USEFUL, but it would be no longer
true to say that they ARE VALUABLE; for value, as we shall soon
see, indicates an essentially social relation; and it is solely
through exchange, reverting as it were from society to Nature,
that we have acquired the idea of utility. The whole development
of civilization originates, then, in the necessity which the
human race is under of continually causing the creation of new
values; just as the evils of society are primarily caused by the
perpetual struggle which we maintain against our own inertia.
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