14 
ON REAL AND 
crease ina kind of value called real, which has 
no reference to any other commodity whatever *. 
Apply to the position of this author the 
rule recommended in the last chapter: in- 
quire, when he speaks of value, value in what? 
and all the possible truth on the subject appears 
inits naked simplicity. The touch of this talis- 
man will show, that the paradox above quoted, 
* Unless it be to an imaginary commodity, to which, in 
assertions of this kind, there seems to be a latent refer- 
ence ; a commodity namely, always produced by the same 
labour. It is no matter, on this theory, whether such a 
commodity exists or mot. An object a is tried by this 
ideal standard, and if it is found that it would have risen 
in relation to it, had the standard existed, 4 is pronounced 
to have risen in real value—so that any one in a jocular 
mood might be tempted to define real value, ¢ value esti- 
mated by a standard which has only an imaginary existence.” 
Nor is the reference to such a standard always a merely 
tacit or latent one. Mr. Ricardo assigns as a reason for 
calling an alteration in wages a fall, that it would . appear 
to be a fall if the value of labour were estimated in an hy- 
pothetical standard of this kind.