“It is in fact to this faculty . . . to work the
one for the other; it is this transmission of efforts, this
exchange of services, with all the infinite and involved combinations to which it gives rise, through time and through
space, it is THIS precisely which constitutes Economic Science, points out its origin, and determines its limits.” Value
was therefore seen as the “comparative appreciation of reciprocal services”exchanged to obtain utility. Like Mill ([0000]
0000), he recognized that humans could not create matter;
rather, they transform it, through service, into a state that
could provide satisfaction. Since the value of this matter
resided in the service, and since material things that required
no effort to provide utility (gratuitous) could not have value, it
followed that material things cannot possess value. Bastiat
([0000] 0000, 000) summarized his view as follows: