Credit, on the whole, grows in importance with an advance in civilization, and this is true especially of credit intended for productive purposes. This is a consequence of the greater division of labor which causes unfinished products to be put on the market more and more frequently,—products which come to have a value only after some time, but which, when that time has elapsed, have present value. And, indeed, as the world advances and civilization grows, it becomes much easier to forecast the future with certainty. The future, also, then becomes more a source of solicitude, and fixed capital, as a consequence, plays a part which grows daily more important. The limit to the development of credit is this: it is safe only when the debtor invests his borrowed goods in the production of, to say the least, their equivalent. This is why the personality of the state, clothed with immortality and with a formally boundless power of taxation, is so often seduced into engaging in transactions of credit which are never self-discharged.(535) The social diseases of panics and of extravagant enterprises stand in the same relation to credit that unbelief and superstition do to true religion.(536) (_Schäffle_.) Section XC. Credit—Effects Of Credit. As regards the effects of credit, we may remark, that it is as powerless directly to produce new capital as is the division of labor to produce new workmen. To every credit of the creditor corresponds a debit of the debtor. As Turgot said: _Tout credit est un emprunt_.(537)(538)(539) But, on the other hand, credit facilitates the transmission of the elements of production, especially of capital, from one hand to another.(540) When, therefore, the debtor employs the capital that he has borrowed, more productively than the creditor would have done, the whole country is a gainer; as it is a loser, on the contrary, when a person engaged in industry advances to the idler, the frugal man to the spendthrift, the solid man to the wild speculator. In declining nations, where every new development hastens decay, the latter alternative may be the prevailing one; and, especially here, may the usurious giving of credit by the shrewd to the simple lead to ruinous debtor-slavery. Among a vigorous and energetic people, the former is apt to govern, as it is only by the productive employment of the loans made that they are permanently enabled to pay interest. Here credit is an invaluable means, not only of putting idle capital in motion, and of making active capital still more active, but especially of concentrating capital, by which it may gain as much in productive power as labor does by the coöperation of labor. This is effected, very frequently, by means of joint-stock companies, the principle of which recommends them especially in enterprises where stationary capital is required rather than circulating capital, and where