I was wet and cold, and had no dry clothes to put on, no food to eat, not a friend to help me. . . . I had but a knife and a pipe. . . . Where was I to go for the night? . . . I went to a tree and made a kind of nest to sleep in. Then I cut a stick to keep off the beasts of prey in case they should come. . . . The next day . . . I swam up to the wreck which was in a sand bank. My first thought was to look around for some food . . . and I ate some of it as I went to and fro, as there was no time to lose. There was, too, some rum, of which I took a good draught, and this gave me heart. . . . I fell to work to make a raft. I found some bread and rice, a Dutch cheese, and some dried goat's flesh, . . . some fresh clothes and four guns, . . . with these I put to sea . . . and brought the raft safe to land with all her freight. . . .
The neat day, as there was still a great store of things left in the ship, which would be of use to me, I thought I ought to bring them to land at once, for I knew that the first storm would break up the ship. . . . The first thing I sought was the tool-chest; and in it were some bags of nails, spikes, saws, knives, and such things; but best of all I found a stone to grind my tools on. There were two or three flasks, some large bags of shot, and a roll of lead. There were some spare sails too, which I brought to the shore.
Now that I had two freight of goods on hand, I made a tent with the ship's sails, to stow them in, and cut the poles for it from the wood.
The neat day I had no great wish for work, but there was too much to be done for me to dwell long on my sad lot. Each day, as it came, I went off to the wreck to fetch more things and I brought back as much as the raft would hold. . . .
The last time I swam to the wreck I found some tea and some gold coin; but as to the gold it made me laugh to look at it. " 0 drug," said I; "thou art no use to me! I care not to save thee. Stay where thou art till the ship goes down; then go thou with it." Still I thought I might as well just take it . . .
I have said not a word of my pets. You may guess how fond I was of them, as they were all the friends left to me. I brought a dog and two cats from the ship.—(Adapted from the abridged edition, published by H. Altemus, Philadelphia.) Crusoe knew not at what moment the waves would sweep into the sea whatever was left. He had scant strength and time for the task. His labor was to be so distributed that he might save from the wrecked ship the most valuable contents. Did he choose wells First, to preserve his life he found a tree to sleep in, and a stick to ward off wild beasts. Then at the ship he took food, clothing, weapons and tools, and made a place to store them safe ; and finally came gold and pets. We see how he ranks them then and there, and how different is the scale from that he had before. His re mark about the gold is whimsically suggestive of the old lin gering standards of choice, and of the dim hope that he might return to live among men, and thus resume his old scale of values.
§ 7. Choice before and after valuation. It is usual to speak of the valuation which a person has (or holds or makes) of an object as preceding choice; but evidently this is not so in the ease of instinctive choice, and many choices have in a measure this impulsive character. In case of a choice of a thing by a person for his own use the valuation is simply the resultant of choice; it is the arithmetic expression necessarily involved in the action and reveals to the person himself what he has done, how he values the object, rather than determines his action.
In a great many business transactions, however, one is not choosing for his own desires, but is trying to forecast the valuations of others to whom he will sell. There is often, in such cases, a long and careful attempt to express in exact fig ures the relative importance of different objects before a choice is finally made. In other cases the valuations precede the choice, when a conscious calculation is made of the relative effectiveness of things (heating power, food-value, etc.) and the relative difficulty of getting them (cost in money, distance to carry, etc.). In this sense of a careful estimate of the im portance of a thing for business purposes, we speak of an as sessor's valuation of property for purposes of taxation, an appraiser's valuation of imports, and a merchant's valuation of his stock-in-trade. This kind of commercial valuation usu ally precedes choice by merchants.' § 8. Value. Now as a choice is made and a valuation is thus expressed, the person choosing feels that there is a certain quality in the thing which evokes or determines his choice. This quality of importance which things have when they are the subjects of man's choice is value. Broadly understood value may be of many kinds: moral (the quality in actions calling for approval or disapproval), religious (the quality in actions, sentiments, and beliefs reflecting what the persons be lieve to be the will of the deity), esthetic (the quality in ob jects that accords with the canons of good taste in color, form, sound, etc.). one species of the larger genus of value. It is the quality in an object in the environ ment to influence a man's action in respect to the control and use of the object. We ascribe this quality to the object that motivates our choice. Bread, meat, dress, houses, land, gold, carriages, slaves, the labor of hired servants, each object is said by you to have (economic) value, just because you feel and know that it sways your behavior in relation to itself. Value in this sense is not inherent or intrinsic in anything; it goes and comes, it grows and wanes, according to the intensity of the desire. It may have existence for one economic subject and not for another. It is not to be thought of as something in a thing before man makes it an object of choice. The log order is: first, choice ; secondly, a valuation by necessary implication; third, value—the quality imputed to the object. Yet in real life these are but three phases, absolutely contem poraneous, of the same thing. Value is but the abstract qual ity which we attach to the thing in our thought, because of the way it makes us behave in its presence. Value is funda mentally a reflection of the individual choice, though many individuals may have a similar choice, and by their interrela tions mutually influence each other's valuations in remark 3 It is, however, but the anticipation and reflection of the choices that purchasers will later make. See on enterprise in Part V.
able ways. Objects have their physical qualities independent of man's choice; the apple has form, weight, the texture and skin which to the eye look red, and the chemical elements that give a certain flavor and taste. These singly or combined are not value, tho each has its part in determining under vary ing conditions, whether the apple is to have also the quality of value. There are as many problems of economic value as there are ways of choosing between economic objects. Their study makes up a large part of economics.'