158 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK
uch real meaning do such curves have? If so-called “marginal
tility” of anything, (or, as I prefer to say, if the want-for-one-
more unit of anything) is a true mathematical quantity, should
ot that marginal want be measurable?
In my first economic publication * I endeavored to show that
his magnitude is measurable,—in theory at least. My object
ere is to go one step further and to show that even the problem
f statistically measuring it should not be considered insoluble.
f this contention is justified, the appearance of unreality which
as surrounded the subject ought to disappear, and, if or when we
actually reach even a rough numerical measurement so that the
subject enters Statistical Economics, the interest in it will be
evived and increased.
It is noteworthy that even Jevons, one of the originators of
he concept of the “want-for-one-more,” (or, as he called it,
‘final degree of utility”), and an enthusiastic believer in
mathematical analysis, seemed to doubt the possibility of giving
o that concept the full fledged status of a measurable quantity.
e said, “We can seldom or never affirm that one pleasure is an
pe multiple of another,” * and again, “I hesitate to say that
men will ever have the means for measuring directly the feelings
of the human heart. A unit of pleasure or of pain is difficult
even to conceive; but it is the amount of these feelings which is
continually prompting us to buying and selling, borrowing and
ending laboring and resting, producing and consuming; and ut is
rom the quantitative effects of the feelings that we t estimate
heir comparative amounts.” *
fr scepticism as to possibly measuring human wants is
especially remarkable in view of Jevons’ statement: “ ‘But where,’
he reader will perhaps ask, ‘are your numerical data for estimat-
ng pleasures and pains in Political Economy?’ I answer, that
y numerical data are more abundant and precise than those
ossessed by any other science, but that we have not yet known
how to employ them. The very abundance of our data is per-
plexing. There is not a clerk nor bookkeeper in the country who
is not engaged in recording numerical facts for the economist.
Op. Cit. pp. 11-24, 86-89. So far as I know this is the only attempt
(other than Edgeworth’s therein cited) of treating “utility” or “want” as a
definite mathematical quantity.
* Theory of Political Economy, p. 13.
8 Op. cit., p. 11.