As forerunners of the theory we may name generally all those who have derived value from utility; specially those who were persistent in basing even exchange value altogether on utility, particularly when they did not shrink from their principle in spite of the obvious influence of costs of production. Usually on this point the statement of the theory is either inconsequent or obscure, or retains its logic and its clearness, at the expense of renouncing completeness, by leaving out the question of costs.
As forerunners of the new theory in the stricter sense of the term we may name those who take up the question of quantities of goods as well as their utility. Usually, of course, this goes only to the extent of showing the changes in the amount of value which follow from changes in supply and demand. But, in the case of a few writers, it has taken a much more exact form, where "scarcity," "limitation of supply" is recognised as condition under which utility creates value -- and that not only, as Ricardo says, as regards certain rare goods, but as regards goods generally. Among writers answering to this description, who may be held the immediate precursors of our theory, are Auguste Walras (De la Nature de la Richesse et de l'Origine de la Valeur, Evreux, 1831), and also Condillac, Genovesi, and Senior.(1*)Passing by those numerous pioneer works, we meet with no less than four authors who had worked out the same theory independently of each other, Gossen,(2*) Jevons,(3*) Menger,(4*)and Leon Walras.(5*) Gossen's statement, in spite of many quite classical points of superiority, is, on the whole, the most imperfect. That of Walras, though admirable of its kind, suffers, to my mind, from the preponderance of the mathematical element.
The laws which govern amounts of value undoubtedly allow of a mathematical expression; nay, the more complicated of these can be expressed exactly only by means of mathematics; and here certainly mathematics has a great task to fulfil. But in the value theory we have to do with something more than the expression of the laws of amounts. The obscure conception of value is to be made clear; all its manifold forms are to be described; the service of value in economic life is to be analysed; the connection of value with so many other economic phenomena is to be shown; in short, we have to give a philosophy of value which needs words, not numbers. And, besides all this, the empirical existence of the alleged facts is to be established.
Finally, Jevons's statement, in spite of its amazing wealth of observation and reflection, in spite of its finished expression, in spite of the catholic spirit which speaks from it, must be placed second to that of Menger. Menger goes more deeply into the subject, inasmuch as he starts from a more general conception of value. For this Menger is indebted to the German school of national economists with its patient untiring labour in formulating the general economic conceptions, and pressing forward from concrete phenomena to that height of abstraction from which the phenomena are to be logically arranged. It may be said that, in great part, the German school long ago formulated the conceptions, leaving for us only the task of filling them out by adequate observation. In this it has laid up a treasure from which all succeeding economic effort may draw indefinitely.
