Many errors in Political Economy proceed from authors thus regarding human wants as a fixed determinate quantity; and it is for this reason that I have deemed it my duty to enlarge on this subject. At the risk of anticipating, it is worth while to notice briefly this mode of reasoning. Economists take generally the enjoyments which satisfy men of the present day, and they assume that human nature admits of no other. Hence, if the bounty of nature, or the power of machinery, or habits of temperance and moderation, succeed in rendering disposable for a time a portion of human labour, this progress disquiets them, they consider it as a disaster, and they retreat behind absurd but specious formulas, such as these: ‹Production is superabundant›,—‹we suffer from plethora›,—‹the power of producing outruns the power of consuming›, etc. [p083] It is not possible to discover a solution of the question of ‹machinery›, or that of ‹external competition›, or that of ‹luxury›, if we persist in considering our ‹wants› as a fixed invariable quantity, and do not take into account their indefinite expansibility. But if human ‹wants› are indefinite, progressive, capable of increase, like desire, which is their never failing source, we must admit, under pain of introducing discordance and contradiction into the economical laws of society, that nature has placed in man and around him indefinite and progressive means of ‹satisfaction›;—equilibrium between the means and the end being the primary condition of all harmony. This is what we shall now examine. I said at the outset of this work that the object of Political Economy is ‹man›, considered with reference to his wants, and his means of satisfying these wants. We must then begin with the study of man and his organization. But we have also seen that he is not a solitary being. If his ‹wants› and his ‹satisfactions› are, from the very nature of sensibility, inseparable from his being, the same thing cannot be said of his ‹efforts›, which spring from the active principle. The latter are susceptible of transmission. In a word, men work for one another. Now a very strange thing takes place. If we take a general, or, if I may be allowed the expression, abstract view, of man, his wants, his efforts, his satisfactions, his constitution, his inclinations, his tendencies, we fall into a train of observation which appears free from doubt and self-evident,—so much so, that the writer finds a difficulty in submitting to the public judgment truths so vulgar and so palpable. He is afraid of provoking ridicule; and thinks, not without reason, that the impatient reader will throw away his book, exclaiming, “I shall not waste time on such trivialities.”