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eally a pure accident in the course of its destiny, an accident against which the old invention in
legitimate possession of its domain should very naturally protest with all its forces, supported in this
battle by the “nature of things,” which has created the universal desire to live and desire to grow. It
should not be said that “this profession now loses ground each day as it gained ground before; after
all, one is as natural as the other.” No, the natural destiny of an industry with its base in human nature
is to progress or persist forever: its reversal is against nature. Hence, it is wrong to be surprised
when it fights with such frenzy and prolongs its existence for longer than the often overwhelming
superiority of its rival gave it reason to hope for—unless it commits suicide, so to speak, from
despair when in fact it still had a chance for life and success.
For analogous reasons the outcry of workers when their salaries are reduced is understandable, for
it is natural that salaries rise or stabilize, not that they descend, since social evolution effects an
augmentation or a stabilization but never a diminution in the number of needs and forms of
consumption imitated, a complication, not a simplification of the conditions for basic well-being.
That is why, by virtue of imitative propagation, when salaries do decrease they do so much less
regularly and much less continually than they increase; growth occurs because of an inherent and
almost irreversible tendency. On the other hand, the rate of interest has an undeniable, historically
demonstrated tendency to decrease constantly until it reaches a minimum from which it would
probably never rise again were it not for some great catastrophe or an unanticipated influx of major
revolutionary industrial inventions. This decrease only looks like a regression. Actually it is the
mathematical expression of a true progression, and I leave it to Mr. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu to prove it,
since, in his great treatise on political economy, he put his finger on the true causes of the age-old and
normally necessary lowering of capital income: in the long run, these causes may be reduced to
imitative propagations, particularly the decreasing productivity of industrial inventions as a
consequence of their more extensive and general exploitation. 9
The number of insurance policies, of savings accounts, of members of mutual benefit societies *3 is
always on the increase; it is to be presumed that it will stop; but will it retrogress, and with the same
regularity? This is quite unlikely. A general panic could, one fine day, cause all deposits to be
withdrawn at once, all insurance to be canceled, all mutual benefit societies to be dissolved; but
unless new processes appear which are capable of responding to the same needs for security and
protection and of satisfying them in a way deemed preferable, these old processes will not gradually
and by themselves fall into disuse. And why not? Because the people who have a savings account, for
instance, must choose between the example of those who followed this current of examples and those
who did not; but the non-imitation of fact, a negative example, is always much less contagious than its
imitation. Hence, I am inclined to think that if we ever see a decrease in criminality or divorces or
suicides, their regression will be irregular, intermittent, and capricious, and will have none of the
striking continuity that characterizes their progression.
The opposite of opulence is indigence, and the median state between these two extremes is ease,
the level of which varies with the country and the period but which on the average rises. An urgent
question is the economic and social role of this age-old opposition. Is it necessary, is it useful, and if
so, what for? Note that it cannot be rigorously pushed to infinity except through one of its branches,
indigence. To lack everything is the infinity of poverty, an extreme too often realized. To possess
everything is an ideal that even billionaires do not achieve. But, practically speaking, one may say
that when they have too much of everything, the plenitude of wealth and luxury is realized as,
elsewhere, the plenitude of misery. In his economic career man tends to move from infinite misery to
infinite luxury. If the prospect of this ideal were surpressed, if there were an attempt to limit his