But to attain my object. I must explain two things, namely,
1st, That Utility has a tendency to become more and more gratuitous, more and more common, as it gradually recedes from the domain of individual appropriation.
2d, That Value, on the other hand, which alone is capable of appropriation, which alone constitutes property legitimately and in fact, has a tendency to diminish more and more in relation to the utility to which it is attached.
Such a demonstration—founded on Property, but only on the property of which Value is the subject, and on Community, but only on the community of utility,—such a demonstration, I say, must satisfy and reconcile all schools, by conceding to them that all have had a glimpse of the truth, but only of partial truth, regarded from different points of view.
Economists! you defend property. There is in the social order no other property than that of which Value is the subject, and that is immovable and unassailable.
Communists! you dream of Community. You have got it. The social order renders all utilities common, provided the exchange of those values which have been appropriated is free.
You are like architects who dispute about a monument of which each has seen only one side. They don’t see ill, but they don’t see all. To make them agree, it is only necessary to ask them to walk round the edifice.
But how am I to reconstruct the social edifice, so as to exhibit to mankind all its beautiful harmony, if I reject its two corner stones. Utility and Value? How can I bring about the desired [p133] reconciliation of various schools upon the platform of truth if I shun the analysis of these two ideas, although the dissidence has arisen from the unhappy confusion which they have caused?
I have felt this kind of introduction necessary, in order, if possible, to secure from the reader a moment’s attention, and relieve him from fatigue and ennui. I am much mistaken if the consoling beauty of the consequences will not amply make up for the dryness of the premises. Had Newton allowed himself to be repulsed at the outset by a distaste for elementary mathematics, never would his heart have beat with rapture on beholding the harmonies of the celestial mechanism; and I maintain that it is only necessary to make our way manfully to an acquaintance with certain first principles, in order to be convinced that God has displayed in the social mechanism goodness no less touching, simplicity no less admirable, splendour no less magnificent.
In the first chapter we viewed man as both active and passive, and we saw that Want and Satisfaction, acting on sensibility alone, were in their own nature personal, peculiar, and intransmissible; that Effort, on the contrary, the connecting link between Want and Satisfaction, the mean term between the motive principle of action and the end we have in view, proceeding from our activity, our spontaneity, our will, was susceptible of conventions and of transmission. I know that, metaphysically, no one can contest this assertion, and maintain that Effort also is personal. I have no desire to enter the territory of ideology, and I hope that my view of the subject will be admitted without controversy when put in this vulgar form:—We cannot feel the wants of others—we cannot feel the satisfactions of others; but we can render service one to another.