36

POLITICAL  ECONOMY

utility  and  the  possession  of  individual
goods.  We  are  in  danger  of  slipping  into
making  baseless  assumptions,  and  therefore
of  reaching  unwarranted  conclusions,  when
we  rashly  skip  examining  experience  in  the
mass  and  hasten  to  deal  at  once  with  questions
of  detail.  Let  us  ask  then,  What  is  the
relation  between  utility  and  income  ?  bearing
in  mind  that  utility  is  to  be  taken  simply  as
a  label  objectively  representative  of  choice.
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  all  ordinary ­
  cases  the  utility  which  we  get  out  of
our  incomes  increases  at  a  diminishing  rate
as  income  increases,  at  least  after  a  time.
We  know  this  directly  from  our  every  day
experiences,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  find
subjective  reasons  for  it.  We  always  try
instinctively  to  assuage  our  most  rgent
cravings  first  ;  consequently  when  fortune
brings  us  an  augmentation  of  income  we
realise,  if  we  have  not  realised  it  before,  that
the  desires  left  to  be  appeased  are  less  intense
than  those  which  received  prior  attention.
There  are  cases  to  which  the  generalisation
does  not  apply,  for  instance,  cases  in  which  the
whole  character  of  a  person’s  life  is  altered
when  his  income  has  reached  a  certain  figure,
but  such  exceptions  may  be  neglected  for
present  purposes.  The  declaration  that  an