achievement. And with all Idealism's distrust
of immediate experience for every evidential use, the Idealist does not
scruple to cite the "higher obviousness" of personal effort, attainment,
and fruition as the best of evidence for his most momentous truth of
all.[59] And accordingly (in sharp descent) we need not hesitate to
regard value in exchange as a primary fact in its own right, standing in
no need of resolution into marginal pseudo-absolutes. A price agreed to
and paid marks a real transition to another level. There are both
marginal valuation and _Werthaltung_ on this level, but they are
subordinate incidents to this level's mapping and the conservation of
its resources. On this level every marginal utility is relative, as we
have seen, to every other through their common relation to the complex
plan of organization as a whole.[60]

Sec. 18. In conclusion one more question closely related to the foregoing
may be briefly touched upon. We have held that the individual's attitude
toward a commodity is in the first instance one of putting a
price-estimate upon it and only secondarily that of holding it in a
provisionally settled marginal esteem. If this principle of the
priority of price-estimation or exchange value is true, it seems evident
that there can be no line of demarcation drawn (except for doubtfully
expedient pedagogical purposes) between (1) "Subjective valuations" with
which individuals are conceived to come to a market and (2) a mechanical
equilibration of demand and supply which it is the distinctive and sole
function of market concourse to effect. In such a view the market
process in strict logic must be timeless as it is spaceless; a
superposition of the two curves is effected and they are seen to cross
in a common point which their shapes geometrically predetermine.
Discussion, in any proper sense, can be no inherent part of a market
process thus conceived. Once in the market, buyers and sellers can only
declare their "subjective exchange valuations" of the commodity and
await the outcome with a dispassionate certainty that whoever may gain
by exchanging at the price to be determined, those who cannot exchange
will at all events not lose. But considered as a typical likeness of men
who have seen a thing they want and are seeking to possess it, this
picture of mingled hope and resignation is not convincing. Most actual
offering of goods for sale that one observes suggests less the
dispassionate man