Our science has to do with the general welfare and prosperity of men, with the proportion which exists between their Efforts and their Satisfactions,—a proportion which the progressive participation of gratuitous utility in the business of production modifies advantageously. You cannot, then, exclude this element from the idea of Wealth. In a scientific point of view, actual or effective wealth is not the sum of values, but the aggregate of the utilities, gratuitous and onerous, which are attached to these values. As regards satisfactions,—that is to say, as regards actual results of wealth, we are as much enriched by the value annihilated by progress as by that which still subsists.
In the ordinary transactions of life, we cease to take utility into account, in proportion as that utility becomes ‹gratuitous› by the lowering of value. Why? because what is gratuitous is ‹common›, and what is common alters in no respect each man’s share or proportion of actual or effective wealth. We do not exchange what is common to all; and as in our every-day transactions we only require to be made acquainted with the proportion which value establishes, we take no account of anything else.
This subject gave rise to a controversy between Ricardo and J. B. Say. Ricardo gave to the word Wealth the sense of Utility—Say, that of Value. The exclusive triumph of one of these champions was impossible, since the word admits of both senses, according as we regard wealth as actual or relative.
But it is necessary to remark, and the more so on account of the great authority of Say in these matters, that if we confound ‹wealth› (in the sense of actual or effective prosperity) with ‹value›; above all, if we affirm that the one is proportional to the other, we shall be apt to give the science a wrong direction. The works of second-rate Economists, and those of the Socialists, show this but too clearly. To set out by concealing from view precisely that which forms the fairest patrimony of the human race, is an unfortunate beginning. It leads us to consider as annihilated that portion of wealth which progress renders common to all, and exposes us to the danger of falling into a ‹petitio principii›, and studying [p182] Political Economy backwards,—the ‹end›, the design, which it is our object to attain, being perpetually confounded with the ‹obstacle› which impedes our efforts.