rticular parts of the supply may be lost with impunity.

_Varieties of Utility._--We have used the term _importance_, rather
than usefulness or utility, to describe the quality which, if it
exists in every particular bit of a substance, makes it all a form of
wealth. With due care we may use the term _utility_. In a way even a
cup of water dipped by a fisherman from the lake is useful, for it
renders a service. Though the man might lose it and be no poorer, he
cannot say that the thing has no utility of any kind. He can say that
it has no importance. What it has we may call _absolute_ utility, or
the power to do for a man something which he wishes to have done. When
the fisherman is thirsty the water will do him good. It has an
absolute service-rendering power; and yet this cupful makes the owner
no better off than he would be without it, since the service which it
is capable of rendering would be rendered whether the man had it or
not. Absolute utility in an article is the power to render any service
whatever, regardless of the question whether it would be rendered
equally well if the article were absent. If conditions were such that
the man would have to go thirsty in case he spilled his cupful of
water, then this little supply would have what we may term _effective_
utility, and this means that the presence of the particular bit is a
positive element in conducing to the man's welfare. Usable things have
absolute utility even when they are superabundant, but they have
effective utility only when the quantity of them is so limited that
every particular bit of it is of some importance. Absolute utility
and limitation of supply insure to them this quality; and this
principle holds true in the economy of the most primitive state as
well as in that of a civilized one.

_The Origin of Wealth._--Some of the things that have this kind[2] of
utility have been given to man by nature. She has furnished some
materials that are useful and has not furnished them in quantities
sufficient to prevent them from being _specifically_ important. On
account of the comparatively niggardly way in which she has doled them
out to man, every bit of the supply has a power to benefit him; and if
he gains some portions, he goes upward in the scale of well-being, and
if he loses some, he goes downward. Wild fruits and fruit trees come
in this category; and a savage who should build his hut in a small
grove of banana trees, if he could keep other p