To adopt this conclusion would be to mistake completely the nature of man. We encounter here a sophism analogous to the one we have already refuted on the subject of the interest of capital. Interest has a tendency to fall, it is said; then it is destined ultimately to disappear altogether. Value and property go on diminishing; then they are destined, it is now said, to be annihilated. The whole sophism consists in omitting the words, ‹for each determinate result›. It is quite true that men obtain ‹determinate results› with a less amount of effort—it is in this respect that they are progressive and perfectible—it is on this account that we are able to affirm that the ‹relative› domain of property becomes narrower, looking at it as regards each given satisfaction. But it is not true that all the ‹results› which it is ‹possible› to obtain are ever exhausted, and hence it is absurd to suppose that it is in the nature of progress to lessen or limit the ‹absolute› domain of property. We have repeated often, and in every shape, that each given effort may, in course of time, serve as the vehicle of a greater amount of gratuitous utility, without our being warranted thence to conclude that men should ever cease to make efforts. All that we can conclude from it is, that their forces, thus rendered disposable, will be employed in combating other obstacles, and will realize, with equal labour, satisfactions hitherto unknown. I must enlarge still farther on this idea. These are not times to leave anything to possible misconstruction when we venture to pronounce the fearful words, Property and Community. Man in a state of isolation can, at any given moment of his existence, exert only a certain amount of effort; and the same thing holds of society. [p234] When man in a state of isolation realizes a step of progress, by making natural agents co-operate with his own labour, the sum of his efforts is reduced by so much, ‹in relation to the useful result sought for›. It would be reduced not relatively only, but ‹absolutely›, if this man, content with his original condition, should convert his progress into leisure, and should abstain from devoting to the acquisition of new enjoyments that portion of effort which is now rendered disposable. That would take for granted that ambition, desire, aspiration, were limited forces, and that the human heart was not indefinitely expansible; but it is quite otherwise. Robinson Crusoe has no sooner handed over part of his work to natural agents, than he devotes his efforts to new enterprises. The sum total of his efforts remains the same,—but one portion of these efforts, aided by a greater amount of natural and gratuitous co-operation, has become more productive, more prolific. This is exactly the phenomenon which we see realized in society.