«o 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 
called demand price. It is important that 
ethical ideas should not be read into the 
conceptions of wealth and value when they 
are being employed in their everyday sense. 
If our aim is to indicate what people ought to 
want instead of what they do want, we had 
better speak of ethical wealth and ethical 
value. 
The introduction of the notion of wealth 
conceived from the ethical point of view raises 
issues which, though they are not primarily 
economic, if they are economic at all, need not, 
I think, be shirked, particularly as their 
examination will serve to clarify ideas vaguely 
hinted at in Chapter I. In opposition to the 
popular economics of his day, Ruskin wrote 
as follows :—“ There is no wealth but Life— 
Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, 
and of admiration ” ; and again, “ To be 
valuable is to avail towards life ” ; and again, 
“ Wealth is the possession of the valuable by 
the valiant ”—and in the highest sense he was 
right. All that we call wealth is only of 
value because it conduces to the great ultimate 
value which means conscious living properly 
conceived—“ valiant ” living. The former is 
economic value and is relative to the end which 
it subserves ; the latter we may call absolute 
value. Now the curious thing is that absolute