it yields to the consumer, but the intrinsic service it is capable of yielding by its right use. Of commercial goods, or any other class of goods, those which have a capacity for satisfying wholesome human wants are ‘wealth,’ those which pander to some base or injurious desire of man are not wealth, but ‘illth,’ availing as they do, not for life but for death. Thus he (Ruskin) posits as the starting-point of Political Economy a standard of life not based upon present subjective valuations of ‘consumers,’ but upon eternal and immutable principles of health and disease, justice and injustice.”[1]
In Unto this Last it sometimes appears that Ruskin refused to recognize that political economy was capable of being made a study distinct from the wider study of the art of life which would include all sorts of human activities that yield vital value. But in Munera Pulveris he virtually confines his analysis to the production and consumption of economic “goods” which come within the compass of “cost” and “utility.” His central thought is the development of “value” in the sense of that which “avails” towards life. And here he distinguishes what he terms “intrinsic” from “effectual” value. “Intrinsic” value is the absolute power to support life. A sheaf of wheat of given quality and weight has in it a measurable power of sustaining the substance of the body; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed power of sustaining its warmth;
- ↑ Page 79.
