his work to increase, and his
devices to multiply.

49. To this doubled loss, or negative power of labour, spent in
producing means of destruction, we have to add, in our estimate of the
consequences of human folly, whatever more insidious waste of toil there
is in production of unnecessary luxury. Such and such an occupation (it
is said) supports so many labourers, because so many obtain wages in
following it; but it is never considered that unless there be a
supporting power in the product of the occupation, the wages given to
one man are merely withdrawn from another. We cannot say of any trade
that it maintains such and such a number of persons, unless we know how
and where the money, now spent in the purchase of its produce, would
have been spent, if that produce had not been manufactured. The
purchasing funds truly support a number of people in making This; but
(probably) leave unsupported an equal number who are making, or could
have made That. The manufacturers of small watches thrive at Geneva;--it
is well;--but where would the money spent on small watches have gone,
had there been no small watches to buy?

50. If the so frequently uttered aphorism of mercantile economy--"labour
is limited by capital," were true, this question would be a definite
one. But it is untrue; and that widely. Out of a given quantity of funds
for wages, more or less labour is to be had, according to the quantity
of will with which we can inspire the workman; and the true limit of
labour is only in the limit of this moral stimulus of the will, and of
the bodily power. In an ultimate, but entirely unpractical sense, labour
is limited by capital, as it is by matter--that is to say, where there
is no material, there can be no work,--but in the practical sense,
labour is limited only by the great original capital of head, heart, and
hand. Even in the most artificial relations of commerce, labour is to
capital as fire to fuel: out of so much fuel, you _can_ have only so
much fire; but out of so much fuel, you _shall_ have so much fire,--not
in proportion to the mass of combustible, but to the force of wind that
fans and water that quenches; and the appliance of both. And labour is
furthered, as conflagration is, not so much by added fuel, as by
admitted air.[20]

51. For which reasons, I had to insert, in Sec. 49, the qualifying
"probably;" for it can never be said positively that the purchase-money,
or wages fund of any trade is withdraw