In other words, the problem of Value or Market price, like all other problems of Political Economy, is a dynamical problem and not a statical one, and must be solved by dynamical methods and symbols from the very start, and not by the statical ones everywhere in vogue among the academical Economists; - it must, in short, be solved by the 'wheel,' not by the rigid 'stick,' with its imaginary subdivisions into indefinite numbers of homogeneous units or increments, tapering down, like tails, to their zeros of 'marginal,' or 'final' costs and utilities. Indeed, it is only because the problem of Value is a dynamical one, dealing with continuously revolving economic quantities and continuously changing prices corresponding to them, that the advisers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer can form the shrewd guesses they do, on the relations between taxation and revenue.

Now all this will be more apparent when we come to the problem of Distribution, but in the meantime we still have to enquire, not what factors enter theoretically into price, or how price in itself is constituted, but how best a market price can be practically fixed and made definite; in other words, what is the best way to determine that a small diamond, for example, shall cost as many pounds as a loaf of bread does pence, in spite of all ordinary fluctuations in the market price of either. And here, again, the dynamical method of solution is not only the simplest and most definite, but the most scientific as well; inasmuch as it applies to new and as yet untested commodities; whereas the analysis of price into its constituent elements, assumes that the price has already been determined. And the only way that the price can get started is, as we have seen, by throwing the commodity on the wheel, and letting it evolve, as it were, its own value by a series of trials; in the same way as we have to put a horse through its paces before we can estimate its chances when entered in a race against other horses.

Knowledge of existing business, and knowledge of human nature, may have taught us much, and our forecast may prove correct, but it would be a psychological forecast mainly, not an economic one. But to proceed by breaking up an economic problem into its ultimate psychological constituents, and trying to solve it by that method, is as if, wanting to know the exact relation of objects to each other in a landscape, instead of using our natural eyes for the purpose, we should try to get at it by looking at it through each constituent of an artificial eye in turn, - the curve of the cornea, the contraction of the pupil, the composition of the retina, or the use of each eye separately - and then piecing the separate results together. Why, then, seek to get at the problem of market-price by breaking it up into its costs and satisfactions, its 'marginal' utilities, and other psychological and economic debris, when the wheel with its axle, - and the men on it in touch with every part of its circumference - is already there, like an organized eye, ready and waiting to do it for us? If Shakespeare had waited until the analytical psychologists had at last managed to get the movements of the cells of the brain under a glass case, before he wrote Hamlet and Othello, he would have died with them unwritten.

And even when the psychologists had reached their goal, I suspect there would still be something wanting somewhere, before they could give us another Hamlet or Othello; just as in a highly complex chronometer, if the smallest cog in its wheels, the minutest contraction or expansion of its metals were omitted, it would not keep accurate time. Besides as this method of the Economists is purely analytical, and not synthetic, nothing practical, in the way of construction, can emerge from it. It is as if we were to break up our brick into brick-dust, and then attempt to build with it. Better by far leave it as a simple brick, and not be too curious as to the nature or composition of its ultimate constituents. Besides it is to reverse the true method of all the sciences, which as they increase in complexity must gather their analyses up into concrete synthetic symbols if we are to use them for hanging other deductions upon; in the same way as in Mathematics we must gather up discrete analytical particulars into general xs, and ys, if we are to solve the more difficult problems, whether of the pure or the applied science. And this I have attempted to do for Political Economy by the symbol of the wheel.

And hence it seems to me that to descend farther into the ultimate analysis and dissection of Value than that of the pace with which quantities of commodities are thrown on the wheel and taken off again at any given point of time, would be to focus your subject-matter too microscopically for the purposes of a science of Political Economy, whose end and aim is that it shall eventuate in an Applied Science for purposes of practical policy and business utility; and would be like applying the microscope to every square inch of the face, in the hope that you were making a more profoundly scientific analysis of its beauty or ugliness, when in fact you would be depriving it of the focus and perspective on which all beauty or ugliness depends. It would be, as we have said, a psychological, or biological, study, rather than an economic one; as much so, indeed, as in the case of our over-subtle economist who proposed to construct his system on the relation between the nerves of sensation and the nerves of motion.

In Literature, Music, and Painting, it is true, we make use of an internal psychological standard and standpoint for focussing our material, and not of the grosser outside standpoint of the movements of the player's arms or fingers, the composition and mixture of the artist's paints, or the merely grammatical structure of the poet's sentences; but in Political Economy it is different. For here quantities of gross material commodities supplied or demanded in given periods of time, are of the essence of the problem, - and not the bodily or mental difficulties encountered in the production, or the desires or satisfactions entering into the consumption of these commodities; and therefore our focal standpoint must be a purely material one like that of our dynamic mechanical wheel.

But the main reason why the definite market prices or values of all economic commodities, not only are, but must be, best determined by actually putting them on the wheel - and not by trying to reduce them to any merely abstract statical law formulated in terms either of costs alone or utility alone, eleven of the relations between the two, - is because combination as well as competition operates at all points both on the production and on the consumption side; and because combination and its results having no law, cannot be reduced to law. For a man who has a thousand pounds which he is free either to invest in some productive enterprise, or to spend in articles of consumption, has the advantage in every bargain over a hundred separate and unrelated men who have ten pounds apiece to invest or consume, inasmuch as he is a combination, while they must be, owing to the difficulties of combination, mostly or mainly competitors. And inasmuch as combination, whether on a large or a small scale, always 'partakes,' as Plato would say, of the nature of monopoly; while monopoly, in turn, knows no law but that of Power or Expediency, - any more than does a military or a political despotism; - the upshot of it all is, that there is no known a priori way of determining actual and definite market prices or values until they are put on the wheel, and have been ground out by it in its revolutions.

And one may even go farther and say, that when we remember that 'freedom of contract' involves the freedom to combine, as well as the freedom to compete, there cannot be, it is evident, with the present rules or conditions under which the game of industry is played, any scientific law of Value at all - if by science we mean the power of predicting the actual market price of new and untried commodities, and not merely of dissecting out the ultimate factors entering into the market prices of old ones.