Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/618

 602 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the increase of value starts from that increasing magnitude whose negative is the scarcity of the object.

Finally, by way of corollary, I will add a more conceptual deduction, namely, that the usual conception of the scarcity theory must presuppose the value which it tries to derive from scarcity. According to this conception, an object of economic desire acquires value if no unlimited number of specimens of its kind is at hand ; that is, if the present quantity of such objects does not cover a series of needs that look to it for satisfaction. The failure of these needs to be covered is felt as a painful con- dition which ought not to be, as the negation of value. The covering of these needs must be something having value. Other- wise the failure could exert no such effect. I f, however, this defect is necessary to establish the value of the present quantity, the value is thereby presupposed whose establishment is in question. The existing quantity has value because the lacking quantity has value. Otherwise its lack could never establish a value. Let us suppose the quantity A, which would completely cover the need, to be divided into two parts : first, the portion actually present, M, and, second, the merely ideally present, N. Accord- ing to the theory, the value M is determined by the fact that N is not present. N must, as we said, have a value in order to produce this consequence. In order that it may have this value, we must, however, think it as present, and, on the contrary, M as not present. Otherwise the whole of A would be accessible, and therefore, according to the scarcity theory, no portion of it would have a value. The value of the actual quantity is based on that of the non-existing quantity, that of the non-existing quantity (which I must think in this connection as present) on that of the existing quantity (which I must think as non-existent). The scarcity element is thus to be accounted for only relatively, equally with that element which has its source in the significance of the object for the feelings. As little as the fact of being desired can scarcity create for the object a valuation otherwise than in the reciprocal relation with another object existing under like conditions. We may examine the one object ever so closely with reference to its self-sufficient properties, we shall never find