46 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 
of action against one another. It would 
seem to imply the conception of a person 
simply as an economic registering machine 
which automatically reacts. This would be 
an altogether incorrect conception. In the 
first place the individual does not merely 
register utilities objectively presented to him ; 
on the contrary he creates the utilities of 
which he takes account. It is his disposition 
and his purpose in life which determine what 
things shall have much value to him and 
what things little value. In the second place 
the registration of utilities, which are to be 
regarded as the product of a person’s character 
and his contact with external nature, takes 
place to a large extent implicitly. Of much of 
our balancing of utilities we are unconscious ; 
the operation only becomes a deliberate one 
when the expenditure of comparatively large 
sums is involved. And in the third place this 
qualification of our doctrine must be admitted, 
that, as regards things which are very cheap in 
relation to our incomes, no doubt we make 
no attempt to bring their marginal utilities 
into relation with the marginal utilities of 
more expensive things. 
We must always remember, not only that 
an individual’s demands are the outcome of 
his upbringing and his surroundings as well