. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the
attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is called
_Werttheorie_ to be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and
misleading terminology.

[61] _Positive Theory of Capital_ (Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II. The
passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).

[62] It is pointed out (e.g., by Davenport in his _Economics of
Enterprise_, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where large
numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their respective
maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity this interval within
which price must fall becomes indefinitely small to the point of
vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with the law of probability, but
it would be an obvious fallacy to see in this any manner of proof or
presumption that therefore the assumptions as to the nature of the
individual valuations upon which such analysis proceeds _are true_. In a
large market where this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity
is there more or less higgling and bargaining than in a small market
where the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if there _is_ higgling
and bargaining (_op. cit._, pp. 96-97), what is it doing that is of
price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a critical
interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory is a good
example of the way in which mathematics may be used to cover the false
assumptions which have to be made in order to make a mathematical
treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter initially plausible as
description of concrete fact.

[63] As I have elsewhere argued ("Subjective and Exchange Value,"
_Journ. Pol. Econ._, Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same token, I confess
skepticism of the classical English doctrine that cost can affect price
only through its effect upon quantity produced. "If all the commodities
used by man," wrote Senior (quoted by Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 58),
"were supplied by nature without any interference whatever of human
labor, but were supplied in precisely the same amounts that they now
are, there is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be
valuable or would exchange at any other than the present proportions."
But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One wonders,
indeed, whether private property would ever have developed or how long
modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were the gift of nature
instea