This journal repeated, with accompanying examples, the exposition
that we have just given of the variability of value, but without
arriving, as we did, at the contradiction. Now, if the estimable
editor, one of the most distinguished economists of the
school of Say, had had stricter logical habits; if he had been
long used, not only to observing facts, but to seeking their
explanation in the ideas which produce them,--I do not doubt that
he would have expressed himself more cautiously, and that,
instead of seeing in the variability of value the LAST WORD OF
SCIENCE, he would have recognized unaided that it is the first.
Seeing that the variability of value proceeds not from things,
but from the mind, he would have said that, as human liberty has
its law, so value must have its law; consequently, that the
hypothesis of a measure of value, this being the common
expression, is not at all irrational; quite the contrary, that it
is the denial of this measure that is illogical, untenable.
And indeed, what is there in the idea of measuring, and
consequently of fixing, value, that is unscientific? All men
believe in it; all wish it, search for it, suppose it: every
proposition of sale or purchase is at bottom only a comparison
between two values,--that is, a determination, more or less
accurate if you will, but nevertheless effective.
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