perhaps, after the fullest explication which I am capable of giving it,
appear still in some degree obscure. I am always willing to run some hazard
of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after
taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may
still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely
abstracted.






CHAPTER V.

OF THE REAL AND NOMINAL PRICE OF COMMODITIES, OR OF THEIR PRICE IN
LABOUR, AND THEIR PRICE IN MONEY.

Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to
enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies, and amusements of human life. But
after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a
very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. The
far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and
he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he
can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity,
therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or
consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to
the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour
therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.

The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who