Menger, Principles of Economics: Utility is the capacity of a thing to serve for the satisfaction of human needs…Our needs, at any rate in part, at least as concerns their origins, depend upon our wills or on our habits. (119) Nietzsche, The Gay Science: Need.—Need is considered the cause why something came to be; but in truth it is often merely an effect of what has come to be. (§205, p. 207) For earlier posts on the connections between Nietzsche and marginalism, and the philosophical dimensions of economic things more generally, see this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.