The author explains these contradictions as follows: “Let us not forget that, the desire for wealth being the ordinary motive and more and more the preponderating motive of crime as it is the only motive of industrial labor, the possession of wealth must keep the most dishonest man from crime as it does the most laborious man from industrial labor—for it is impossible to desire what one has—at least if the satisfaction of this desire has not meant the over-exciting of it.... Now in business circles, where on account of men’s throwing one another into a fever, a constant gaining of wealth, rather than wealth itself, is the end pursued, a fortune is like those peppered liqueurs which arouse thirst more than they quench it. Hence it comes, doubtless, as well as from the excitement prevailing in these circles, that criminality there is as great as among domestic servants. In the same way, in the licentious environments, in the great cities, where there are masses of working people, sexual crimes are as much more numerous as the pleasures of the senses are there more easily come by. But we can lay it down as a principle that where wealth is an obstacle to activity it is also an obstacle to crime, very much as political power ceases to be dangerous at the moment when it ceases to be ambitious. This is the situation among the rural proprietors, small and great, among stockholders, and even in the majority of the liberal professions...; content with his relative well-being, man indulges in an intellectual half-labor, artistic rather than mechanical, honorable rather than mercenary, and abstains from flagitious means of obtaining an increase of income which he desires moderately. The French peasant, in general, partakes of this moderation of desires, and, rich from his sobriety, his stoicism, his frugality, his plot of ground at last acquired, he is happier than the feverish millionaire, financier, or politician, driven by his very millions to sow the seed of his rotten speculations, rascalities, and extortions upon a vast scale. Further the well-to-do agriculturists are in general the most honest people. Let us not speak of wealth and poverty, to tell the truth, not even of well-being and the reverse, but rather of happiness and unhappiness, and be careful how we deny this truth, as old as the world, that the wicked man’s excuse is often to be found in his being unhappy. Children of this century ... let us confess that under its brilliant exterior our society is not happy, and if we had no other assurances of its great evils than its numerous crimes, without giving a thought to its suicides, and its increasing cases of insanity, without lending an ear to the cries of envy, of suffering, and of hatred ... we should not be able to call its woes in question.