Is this saying that it will ever reach zero?  No; because, I repeat it, the principle of a remuneration is in the loan.  To say that interest will be annihilated, is to say that there will never be any motive for saving, for denying ourselves, in order to form new capitals, nor even to preserve the old ones.  In this case, the waste would immediately bring a void, and interest would directly reappear.

In that, the nature of the services of which we are speaking does not differ from any other.  Thanks to industrial progress, a pair of stockings, which used to be worth six francs, has successively been worth only four, three, and two.  No one can say to what point this value will descend; but we can affirm that it will never reach zero, unless the stockings finish by producing themselves spontaneously.  Why?  Because the principle of remuneration is in labour; because he who works for another renders a service, and ought to receive a service.  If no one paid for stockings, they would cease to be made; and, with the scarcity, the price would not fail to reappear.

The sophism which I am now combating has its root in the infinite divisibility which belongs to value, as it does to matter.

It appears at first paradoxical, but it is well known to all mathematicians, that, through all eternity, fractions may be taken from a weight without the weight ever being annihilated.  It is sufficient that each successive fraction be less than the preceding one, in a determined and regular proportion.

There are countries where people apply themselves to increasing the size of horses, or diminishing in sheep the size of the head.  It is impossible to say precisely to what point they will arrive in this.  No one can say that he has seen the largest horse or the smallest sheep’s head that will ever appear in the world.  But he may safely say that the size of horses will never attain to infinity, nor the heads of sheep to nothing.

In the same way, no one can say to what point the price of stockings nor the interest of capitals will come down; but we may safely affirm, when we know the nature of things, that neither the one nor the other will ever arrive at zero, for labour and capital can no more live without recompense than a sheep without a head.

The arguments of M. Proudhon reduce themselves, then, to this:—­Since the most skilful agriculturists are those who have reduced the heads of sheep to the smallest size, we shall have arrived at the highest agricultural perfection when sheep have no longer any heads.  Therefore, in order to realise the perfection, let us behead them.

I have now done with this wearisome discussion.  Why is it that the breath of false doctrine has made it needful to examine into the intimate nature of interest?  I must not leave off without remarking upon a beautiful moral which may be drawn from this law:—­“The depression of interest is proportioned to the abundance of capitals.”  This law being granted, if there is a class of men to whom it is more important than to any other that capitals be formed, accumulate, multiply, abound, and superabound, it is certainly the class which borrows them directly or indirectly; it is those men who operate upon materials, who gain assistance by instruments, who live upon provisions, produced and economised by other men.