cautiously convert them into money in the market—in short, treat them economically? And again, is it true that economy has regard to those goods which have cost labour only in so far as labour has completed the work of nature? If that were the case, men acting economically would have to put a cask of the most exquisite Rhine wine on the same level with a cask of well-made but naturally inferior country wine, for human labour has done pretty much the same for both. That, notwithstanding this, the Rhine wine is often valued economically at ten times the amount of the other, is a striking confutation of Rodbertus's theorem at the hands of everyday experience.
All this is so obvious that we might fairly expect Rodbertus to have taken every precaution to guard this, his first and most important fundamental proposition, against such objections. In this expectation, however, we are disappointed. With peculiar carelessness he is content on almost every occasion to assert this proposition in the tone of an axiom. Sometimes he appeals on its behalf to the authority of Adam Smith and Ricardo, and only on one single occasion does he say anything that might be construed as an attempt to give it any real foundation.
The critic will scarcely be satisfied with such poor support for a proposition so important. As regards the authorities appealed to, in a scientific discussion authorities in themselves prove nothing. Their strength is simply the strength of the arguments which they represent. But we shall shortly have an opportunity of convincing ourselves that Adam Smith and Ricardo merely assert the proposition as an axiom without giving any kind of argument for it. Moreover, as Knies has on a recent occasion very properly pointed out,*39 Adam Smith and Ricardo themselves have not held consistently to it.
In the one seriously argued passage Rodbertus says: "Every product that comes to us through labour in the shape of a good is, economically speaking, to be placed to the credit of human labour alone, because labour is the only original power, and also the only original cost with which human economy is concerned."*40 As regards this argument, however, one may seriously doubt, in the first place, whether the premiss made use of is itself correct, and Knies has shown that there is good reason for questioning it.*41 And in the second place, even if the premiss be correct, the conclusion is not necessarily so. Even if labour actually were the sole original power with which human economy has anything to do, I do not at all see why it should not be desirable to act economically in regard to some things besides "original powers." Why not in regard to certain results of these original powers, or to the results of other original powers? Why not, for instance, with the golden meteorite we spoke of? Why not with the precious stone we accidentally find? Why not with natural deposits of coal? Rodbertus has too narrow a conception both of the nature and of the motive of economy. We deal economically with the original power, labour, because, as Rodbertus quite correctly says, "Labour is limited by time and strength, because in being employed it is expended, and because in the end it robs us of our freedom." But all these are only secondary motives, not the final motive for our economic conduct. In the last resort we deal economically with limited and toilsome labour because we should suffer loss of wellbeing by an uneconomic treatment. But exactly the same motive impels us to deal economically with every other useful thing which, as existing in a limited quantity, we could not want or lose without losing something of the enjoyment of life. It matters not whether it be an original power or not; whether the thing has cost the original power we call labour or not.
Finally, the position taken by Rodbertus becomes entirely untenable when he adds that goods are to be regarded as the products of material manual labour alone. This principle would forbid even direct intellectual guidance of labour from being recognised as having any productive function, and wou