DEMAND AND VALUE 25

of highly valuable goods, superior qualities of goods afford
higher gratification than inferior qualities, and expenditure
on food and clothing is capable of expansion, far beyond the
limits provided by the sheer needs for existence, in procuring
the satisfactions afforded by the consumption of superior
qualities of food and clothing, The satisfaction of the more
imperative cravings having been assured, the development
of tastes of an wsthetic or intellectual character becomes
possible, In affording gratification to these tastes, satiety is
approached much more slowly than in the case of the
elementary cravings, of hunger and the like. It thus appears
to be in accordance with experience, that the more we have
the more we want. Yet the sense in which this is true is
not such as to negative the validity of the principle of
diminishing utility, which may be expressed in a phrase
corresponding to the one just used as follows: The more we
have of any particular commodity, the less we desire to have
more of that same commodity.
The statement of the demand for any given commodity,
whether the demand of an individual or that of a community,
cannot be considered to be satisfactorily expressed by a mere
record of the amount of commodity demanded at some one
price, even though the price in question be that prevailing at
the time to which the statement refers. A complete knowledge
 of the demand requires, in addition to this particular
“ marginal demand price” corresponding to a stated quantity
demanded at that price, further information as to the amounts
demanded at each and every one of a series of prices
sufficiently extensive to cover all probable changes which
might supervene, even if it be not exhaustive, covering
absolutely a// possible prices. A tabulation of a sufficient
number of prices, and corresponding quantities demanded,
may suffice to indicate the direction, and approximate extent,
of variation from these in the intervals between consecutive
items in such a tabulation, since for practical purposes tables
must be limited in extent.
Such a record will reveal, among other interesting
features, the noteworthy fact that, in general, the increases
in the amount demanded do not maintain a constant pro-