To
maintain that human labor can end by wanting employment, it would be
necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter obstacles.
CHAPTER III.
EFFORT--RESULT.
We have seen that between our wants and their gratification many
obstacles are interposed. We conquer or weaken these by the employment
of our faculties. It may be said, in general terms, that industry is
an effort followed by a result.
But by what do we measure our well-being? By our riches? By the result
of our effort, or by the effort itself? There exists always a
proportion between the effort employed and the result obtained. Does
progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the
first term of this proportion--between effort or result?
Both propositions have been sustained, and in political economy
opinions are divided between them.
According to the first system, riches are the result of labor. They
increase in the same ratio as _the result does to the effort_.
Absolute perfection, of which God is the type, consists in the
infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz.
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