The second as logically inclines to everything which can augment the
difficulty and diminish the product; as, privileges, monopolies,
restrictions, prohibition, suppression of machinery, sterility, &c.
It is well to mark here that the universal practice of men is always
guided by the principle of the first system. Every _workman_, whether
agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher,
devotes the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more
quickly, more economically--in a word, _to do more with less_.
The opposite doctrine is in use with theorists, essayists, statesmen,
ministers, men whose business is to make experiments upon society. And
even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns
themselves, they act, like everybody else, upon the principle of
obtaining from their labor the greatest possible quantity of useful
results.
It may be supposed that I exaggerate, and that there are no true
Sisyphists.
I grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extreme
consequences. And this must always be the case when one starts upon a
wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it
leads, cannot but check it in its progress.
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