From beginning to end of his work, however, M. de Sismondi seems to have a lurking consciousness that he is mistaken, and that a dark veil may have interposed itself between his mind and the truth. He does not venture, like M. de Saint-Chamans, to announce roughly and bluntly the consequences of his principle—he hesitates, and is troubled. He asks himself sometimes if it is possible that all men from the beginning of the world have been in error, and on the road to self-destruction, in seeking to diminish the proportion which Effort bears to Satisfaction,—that is to say, ‹value›. At once the friend and the enemy of liberty, he fears it, since the abundance which depreciates value leads to universal poverty, and yet he knows not how to set about the destruction of this fatal liberty. He thus arrives at the confines of socialism and artificial organization, and insinuates that government and science should regulate and control everything. Then he sees the danger of the advice he is giving, retracts it, and ends by falling into despair, exclaiming—“Liberty leads to the abyss of poverty—Constraint is as impossible as it is useless—there is no escape.” In truth and reality, there is none, if Value be Riches; in other words, if the obstacle to prosperity be prosperity itself,—that is to say, if Evil be Good. The latest writer, as far as I know, who has stirred this question [p188] is M. Proudhon. It made the fortune of his book, ‹Des Contradictions Économiques›. Never was there a finer opportunity of seizing a paradox by the forelock, and snapping his fingers at science. Never was there a fairer occasion of asking—“Do you see in the increase of value a good or an evil? ‹Quidquid dixeris argumentabor.›” Just think what a treat![48] “I call upon any earnest Economist to explain to me, otherwise than by varying and repeating the question, why value diminishes in proportion as production increases, and ‹vice versa›. . . . In technical phrase, value in use and value in exchange, although necessary to each other, are in an inverse ratio to each other. . . . . Value in use and value in exchange remain, then, fatally enchained, although in their own nature they tend to exclude each other.” “For this contradiction, which is inherent in the notion of value, no cause can be assigned, nor is any explanation of it possible. . . From the data, that man has need of a great variety of commodities, and that he must provide them by his labour, the necessary conclusion is, that there exists an antagonism between value in use and value in exchange, and from this antagonism a contradiction arises at the very threshold of Political Economy. No amount of intelligence, no agency, divine or human, can make it otherwise. In place, then, of beating about for a useless explanation, let us content ourselves with pointing out clearly the ‹necessity of the contradiction›.”