It will be seen that, by the definitions with which Ruskin starts, we are perhaps carried out of the domain of the orthodox science. Political economy has become, as it were, qualitative, not quantitative merely,- and qualitative of other elements than money, as the mercantile school thought, or even than wealth, as defined by Smith and Mill.

Now, this is the first great change that Ruskin seeks to make in the orthodox science, in the idea of what is wealth; that is, of what is value. Yet this may be said. to be within the scope of orthodox economy, which treats of labor, of value, of money, of x, y, and z, and the quantity of each. Ruskin does not yet introduce a fourth variable; but he says: "Your y is not y: it is a + b. In fact, you do not know anything about y."

The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give... a logical definition of WEALTH.... The most reputed essay on that subject which has appeared in modern times, after opening with the statement that "writers on political economy profess to teach or to investigate the nature of wealth," thus follows up the declaration of its thesis: "Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth. . . . It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition." [Unto This Last, Preface.]

What should we think, says Ruskin, of a writer on astronomy who began his treatise by saying, Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by stars? "There is not one person in ten thousand who has a notion sufficiently correct, even for the commonest purposes, of what is meant' by wealth; still less of what wealth everlastingly is, whether we mean it or not."

He quotes Mill's definition: wealth consists of all useful and agreeable objects which possess exchangeable value. What, then, is value?

The word "value," when used without adjunct, always means in political economy value in exchange (Mill, 1. i. 3). So that, if two

ships cannot exchange their rudders, their rudders are, in politico-economic language, of no value to either? [Unto This Last, iv.]

Moreover, usefulness and agreeableness underlie the exchange value, and must exist before we can esteem the thing an object of wealth.

Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends not merely on its own nature, but on the number of people who can and will use it. A horse is useless, and therefore unsalable, if no one can ride, a sword if no one can strike, and meat if no one can eat. Thus every material utility depends on its relative human capacity. Similarly, the agreeableness of a thing depends not merely on its own likableness, but on the number of people who can be got to like it. . . .

That is to say, the agreeableness of a thing depends on its relative human disposition. Therefore, political economy, being a science of wealth, must be a science respecting human capacities and dispositions. But moral considerations have nothing to do with political economy (Mill, 111. i. 2). Therefore, moral considerations have nothing to do with human capacities and dispositions.

Ruskin also combats the views that "anything which is an object of desire to numbers, and is limited in quantity so as to have rated worth in exchange, may be called or [even] virtually become wealth"; and that "the worth of things depends on the demand for them instead of on the use of them." And he compares an obscene French lithograph with the pictures of Tintoret in Venice. The labor employed on the stone for the lithograph was very much more than Tintoret gave to his picture: if labor be the origin of value, therefore, the stone is the more valuable article of the two. And since, also, it is capable of producing a large number of immediately salable or exchangeable impressions, for which the "demand" is constant, the city of Paris is, under all hitherto stated principles of political economy, richer in the possession of the lithographic stone than Venice with the picture.

But no.

Wealth consists in an intrinsic value developed by a vital power; and the study of wealth is a province of natural science,- it deals with the essential properties

of things. The study of money is a province of commercial science: it deals with conditions of engagement and exchange. The study of riches is a province of moral science: it deals with the due relations of men to each other in regard to their material possessions, and with the just laws of their association for purposes of labor. And wealth consists of things in themselves valuable; money, of documentary claims to the possession of such things (not only a "medium of exchange"); and riches is a relative term, expressing the magnitude of the possessions of one person or society as compared with those of others. Now, then, what is value?

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.

The reader must, by anticipation, be warned against confusing value with cost or with price. Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labor required to produce it; price, the quantity of labor which its possessor will take in exchange for it. Cost and price are commercial conditions, to be studied under the head of money.

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 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. Where the intrinsic value and acceptant capacity come together, there is effectual value, or wealth; where there is either no intrinsic value or no acceptant capacity, there is no effectual value,— that is to say, no wealth. A horse is no wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we cannot see, nor can any noble thing be wealth, except to a noble person. As the aptness of the user increases, the effectual value

of the thing used increases, and in its entirety can co-exist only with perfect skill of use and fitness of nature. [Munera Pulveris, i.]

"Valuable material things," he goes on, "may be conveniently referred to five heads":—

(1) Land, with its associated air, water, and organisms.

(2) Houses, furniture, and instruments.

(3) Stored or prepared food, medicine, and articles of bodily luxury, including clothing.

(4) Books.

(5) Works of art.

A list notable chiefly for its omissions.

Value depends neither on price, as when the owner of a "galled jade" paid for it his hundred pounds, nor on cost, as in the Paris lithographic stone, nor on caprice. "And the wealth of the world consists broadly in its healthy food-giving land, its convenient building land, its useful animals, its useful minerals, its books and works of art."

Valor, from valere, to be well or strong (vyaivw),—strong, in life (if a man), or valiant; strong, for life (if a thing), or valuable. To be "valuable," therefore, is to "avail towards life." A truly valuable or availing thing is that which leads to life with its whole strength. In proportion as it does not lead to life, or as its strength is broken, it is less valuable. In proportion as it leads away from life, it is unvaluable or malignant. The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opinion and of quantity. . . .

The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from witchcraft and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that lead to life, and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy, they suppose indifferent things, such as excrescences of shell-fish and pieces of blue and red stone, to be valuable, and spend large measure of the labor which ought to be employed for the extension and ennobling of life in diving or digging for them and cutting them into various shapes; or if, in the same state of infancy, they imagine precious and beneficent things, such as air, light, and cleanliness, to be valueless; or if, finally, they imagine the conditions of their own existence, by which alone they can truly possess or

use anything,—such, for instance, as peace, trust, and love,—to be prudently exchangeable, when the market offers, for gold, iron, or excrescences of shells, the great and only science of political economy teaches them, in all these cases, what is vanity and what is substance, and how the service of Death, the Lord of Waste, and of eternal emptiness, differs from the service of Wisdom, the Lady of Saving, and of eternal fulness,- she who has said, "I will cause those that love me to inherit SUBSTANCE, and I will FILL their treasures." [Unto This Last, iv.]

And the term "wealth" is never to be attached to the accidental object of a morbid desire, but only to the constant object of a legitimate one. It is intrinsic. It is dependent, in order to become effectual, on a given degree of vital power in the possessor. "In giving the name of wealth to a thing we cannot use, we in reality confuse wealth with money"; for it has only value in exchange, not effectual value. It is at best a cumbrous form of bank-note. "Wealth is the possession of the valuable by the valiant." And it follows, the actual existence of wealth being "dependent on the power of its possessor, that the sum of wealth held by the nation, instead of being constant or calculable, varies hourly-nay, momentarily -with the number and character of its holders. And, further, since the worth of currency is proportioned to the sum of material wealth which it represents, if the sum of the wealth changes, the worth of the currency changes."

So much for the material of the science, the y of which it treats. I have quoted at length upon this point, partly because it seems likely to remain the most effectual part of Ruskin's quota to the history of economics, partly because it was necessary once for all to give an idea of Ruskin's style and matter,- a style loaded with thought so broad, with meaning so full, that it is as unjust to sum it up in formulas as to represent a statue by mathematical lines. Yet all this can hardly be said to transcend the scope of economics. So far as Ruskin places his wealth. in land and its products, he. merely reacts towards the