an anonymous and vague impersonality, reaps all the
benefit of it. Moreover, why should he care about it, since his project
or reform might end up in the archives. The machine is too vast and
complicated, too unwieldy, too clumsy, with its rusty wheels, its "old
customs and acquired rights," to be renewed and rebuilt as one might a
farm, a warehouse or a foundry. Accordingly, he has no idea of troubling
himself further in the matter; on leaving his office he dismisses it
from his mind; he lets things go on automatically, just as it happens,
in a costly way and with indifferent results. Even in a country of as
much probity as France, it is calculated that every enterprise managed
by the State costs one quarter more, and brings in one quarter less,
than when entrusted to private hands. Consequently if work were
withheld from individuals in order that the State might undertake it the
community, when the accounts came to be balanced, would suffer a loss of
one-half.[2216]

Now, this is true of all work, whether spiritual or material not only of
agricultural, industrial and commercial products, but, again, of works
of science and of art, of literature and philosophy, of charity, of
education and propaganda. Not only when driven by egoism, such as
personal interest and vulgar vanity, but also when a disinterested
sentiment is involved, such the discovery of truth, the creation of
beauty, the propagation of a faith, the diffusion of convictions,
religious enthusiasm or natural generosity, love in a broad or a narrow
sense, spanning from one who embraces all humanity to one who devotes
himself wholly to his friends and kindred. The effect is the same in
both cases, because the cause is the same. Always, in the shop directed
by the free workman, the motivating force is enormous, almost
infinite, because it is a living spring which flows at all hours and is
inexhaustible. The mother thinks constantly of her child, the savant of
his science, the artist of his art, the inventor of his inventions, the
philanthropist of his endowments, Faraday of electricity, Stephenson
of his locomotive, Pasteur of his microbes, De Lesseps of his isthmus,
sisters of charity of their poor. Through this peculiar concentration of
thought, man derives every possible advantage from human faculties and
surroundings; he himself gets to be a more and more perfect instrument,
and, moreover, he fashions others: with this he daily reduces the
friction of the