DEMAND AND VALUE

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which must be consumed in its production. With an isolated
individual, or self-contained household, the aspect of value
which influences action is the serviceability of goods, their
utility to the producing individual or household. In modern
developed communities, the greater part of the productive
effort is directed to the production of goods for exchange,
and only the minor part, sometimes a very small part indeed,
is devoted to providing for needs directly. In regard to this
latter part, the consideration of importance in reference to
what is produced is, as with the isolated individual, its utility
rather than exchange value. In devoting attention to exchange
 value, then, that aspect of value which calls for most
consideration is selected, while the fact that another aspect
may have importance in particular connections is not ignored.
Considerations relating to value are, then, of fundamental
importance in the fields of production, of distribution, and of
consumption and value therefore claims the most careful
attention of the student.
First, it is to be noted that value is not a property of
commodities in any absolute sense. Value arises in virtue
of the relation of commodities to persons. As needs change,
both the absolute and relative importance of commodities
will vary, and their values will be modified accordingly,
Thus furs and fires have a very different degree of importance
 in summer and winter, in the tropics and in arctic or
sub-arctic regions,
Let us develop this conception of changing degrees of
importance possessed by identical commodities as a result
of changed needs. For economic purposes, perhaps the
most important illustration of this principle is found in the
decrease of importance which we assign to further supplies
of a commodity as the result of having already acquired
enough of it to satisfy our ordinary requirements. This
decrease is progressive and continuous in the vast majority
of cases. The more we already have of a thing, the less
eager are we for more of that thing. Our most pressing
needs for it are, naturally, satisfied while we are still not
supplied with enough to gratify every desire which the
possession or use of the commodity could oratify. But the