Contrasting sharply with the prevailing mercantilist thinking that gave gold a privileged place, Quesnay believed that land was the source of all value. Figure 3 illustrates how for him, in the end, everything that nourished humans came from the earth. He pointed out that, unlike humans, Nature actually produced new things: grain out of small seeds for food, trees out of saplings and mineral ores from the earth from which houses and ships and machinery were built.
