ember that human
labor is not an _end_, but a _means_. _It is never without employment._
If one obstacle is removed, it seizes another, and mankind is delivered
from two obstacles by the same effort which was at first necessary for
one. If the labor of coopers becomes useless, it must take another
direction. But with what, it may be asked, will they be remunerated?
Precisely with what they are at present remunerated. For if a certain
quantity of labor becomes free from its original occupation, to be
otherwise disposed of, a corresponding quantity of wages must thus also
become free. To maintain that human labor can end by wanting employment,
it would be necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter
obstacles. In such a case, labor would be not only impossible, it would
be superfluous. We should have nothing to do, because we should be
all-powerful, and our _fiat_ alone would satisfy at once our wants and
our desires.

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 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?

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., effort none,
result infinite.

The second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forms the
measure of, and constitutes, our riches. Progression is the increase of
the _proportion of the effort to the result_. Its ideal extreme may be
represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of Sisyphus.[7]

[Footnote 7: We will therefore beg the reader to allow us in future, for
the sake of conciseness, to designate this system under the term of
_Sisyphism_.]

The first system tends naturally to the encouragement of every thing
which diminishes difficulties, and augments product