Note † — Chapter VII · A Psychological Theory of Value

The very impulses which enable him to co-operate in gaining his dinner would themselves, if not satisfied, wreck by their mere frustration all his activities. This happens all through the hierarchy. Impulses, whose exercise may have been originally only important as means, and which might once have been replaced by quite different sets, become in time necessary conditions for innumerable quite different performances. Objects, again, originally valued because they satisfy one need, are found later to be also capable of satisfying others. Dress, for example, appears to have originated in magical, ‘life-giving,’ ornaments†, but so many other interests derive satisfaction from it that controversy can still arise as to its primitive uses.