The determination of the degree in which these two elements of value can be united in land, or in which either element must, or should, in particular cases, be sacrificed to the other, forms the most important branch of economical inquiry respecting preferences of things.
2. Buildings, furniture, and instruments.
The value of buildings consists—A, in permanent strength, with convenience of form, of size, and of position; so as to render employment peaceful, social intercourse easy, temperature and air healthy. The advisable or possible magnitude of cities and mode of their distribution in squares, streets, courts, etc., the relative value of sites of land, and the modes of structure which are healthiest and most permanent, have to be studied under this head.
B. The value of buildings consists, secondarily, in historical association and architectural beauty, of which we have to examine the influence on manners and life.
The value of instruments consists—
A. In their power of shortening labour, or otherwise accomplishing (as ships) what human strength unaided could not. The kinds of work which are severally best accomplished by hand or by machine;—the effect of machinery in gathering and multiplying population, and its influence on the minds and bodies of such population; together with the conceivable uses of machinery on a colossal scale in accomplishing mighty and useful works, hitherto unthought of, such as the deepening of large river channels;—changing the surface of mountainous districts;—irrigating tracts of desert in the torrid zone;—breaking up, and thus rendering capable of quicker fusion edges of ice in the northern and southern Arctic seas, etc., so rendering parts of the earth habitable which hitherto have not been so, are to be studied under this head.
B. The value of instruments is, secondarily, in their aid to abstract sciences. The degree in which the multiplication of such instruments should be encouraged, so as to make them, if large, easy of access to numbers (as costly telescopes), or so cheap as that they might, in a serviceable form, become a common part of the furniture of households, is to be considered under this head.
3. Food, medicine, and articles of luxury. Under this head we shall have to examine the possible methods of obtaining pure and nourishing food in such security and equality of supply as to avoid both waste and famine; then the economy of medicine and just range of sanitary law; finally, the economy of luxury, partly an aesthetic and partly an ethical question.
4. Books. The value of these consists—
A. In their power of preserving and communicating the knowledge of facts.