eople out of it, would
be, by so much, better off than they. The grove and its fruits would
constitute their owner's wealth.

[2] The term _final_ utility is used with much the same
significance as specific importance. It is the utility of the
last and least important part of the supply, and the use of
the term requires us to think of the supply as offered to
users unit by unit till the whole amount is in their hands.
The first unit, when it stands alone, is more important than
any later one will be. The second is of less consequence, and
the last is the least important of all. When, however, all
have been supplied and are together available for use, one is
as important as another. Each one has an effective utility
which is measured by the service rendered by the last one.
The term _specific_ indicates that we measure the importance
of the supply of an article not in its entirety, but bit by
bit, while the term _effective_ is the antithesis of
_absolute_ and means that each bit of the supply not only
renders an absolute service, but renders one which would not
be gratuitously rendered by some other part of the supply in
case this portion were removed or destroyed. We do not here
think of the supply as built up from nothing to its present
size bit by bit, but look at it as it stands and measure the
importance of any particular quantity. When we speak of final
utility, we think of a series of "increments" supplied one
after another, and in this case the successive increments
become less and less important, since, after some have been
supplied, the want of the kind of good that they represent is
less keenly felt. The conception of the series of units is
merely a means of isolating one unit from a total number and
obtaining a mental measurement of its importance which
corresponds with the effective importance of any unit in the
entire quantity.

_Land an Original Form of Wealth._--Land is the original gift of
nature to humanity, and wherever there are people enough to make the
possession of a particular piece of it important, it becomes a form of
wealth. It can be valueless only when population is very sparse; and
then an increase in the number of people dwelling on it gives to it
early the attribute of specific importance. The land that is
accessible to a growing population cannot long be superabundan