Note 2 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

“Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; price, the quantity of labour which its possessor will take in exchange for it. ‘Value’ signifies the strength, or ‘availing’ of anything towards the sustaining of life, and is always twofold; that is to say, primarily, intrinsic, and secondarily, effectual. Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to support life. A sheaf of wheat of given quality and weight has in it a measurable power of sustaining the substance of the body; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed power of sustaining its warmth; and a cluster of flowers of given beauty, a fixed power of enlivening or animating the senses and heart. It does not in the least affect the intrinsic value of the wheat, the air, or the flowers, that men refuse or despise them. Used or not, their own power is in them, and that particular power is in nothing else. But in order that this value of theirs may become effectual, a certain state is necessary in the recipient of it. The digesting, breathing, and perceiving functions must be perfect in the human creature before the food, air, or flowers can become of their full value to it. The production of effectual value, therefore, always involves two needs: first, the production of a thing essentially useful; then the production of the capacity to use it.”—Munera Pulveris, i. § 12.

I quote this passage, partly on account of its suggestiveness, partly to show how impossible it would be to reconcile any such definition of value either with ordinary language or with economic science.