capital produces no interest.”  Then follow this series of consequences—­“Therefore he who lends a capital ought to obtain nothing from it; therefore he who lends you a capital, if he gains something by it, is robbing you; therefore all capitalists are robbers; therefore wealth, which ought to serve gratuitously those who borrow it, belongs in reality to those to whom it does not belong; therefore there is no such thing as property; therefore everything belongs to everybody; therefore ...”

B. This is very serious; the more so, from the syllogism being so admirably formed.  I should very much like to be enlightened on the subject.  But, alas!  I can no longer command my attention.  There is such a confusion in my head of the words cash, money, services, capital, interest, that, really, I hardly know where I am.  We will, if you please, resume the conversation another day.

F. In the meantime, here is a little work entitled Capital and Rent.  It may perhaps remove some of your doubts.  Just look at it, when you are in want of a little amusement.

B. To amuse me?

F. Who knows?  One nail drives in another; one wearisome thing drives away another.

B. I have not yet made up my mind that your views upon cash and political economy in general are correct.  But, from your conversation, this is what I have gathered:—­That these questions are of the highest importance; for peace or war, order or anarchy, the union or the antagonism of citizens, are at the root of the answer to them.  How is it that, in France, a science which concerns us all so nearly, and the diffusion of which would have so decisive an influence upon the fate of mankind, is so little known?  Is it that the State does not teach it sufficiently?

F. Not exactly.  For, without knowing it, it applies itself to loading everybody’s brain with prejudices, and everybody’s heart with sentiments favourable to the spirit of anarchy, war, and hatred; so that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and union presents itself, it is in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side,—­it cannot gain admittance.

B. Decidedly, you are a frightful grumbler.  What interest can the State have in mystifying people’s intellects in favour of revolutions, and civil and foreign wars?  There must certainly be a great deal of exaggeration in what you say.

F. Consider.  At the period when our intellectual faculties begin to develop themselves, at the age when impressions are liveliest, when habits of mind are formed with the greatest ease—­when we might look at society and understand it—­in a word, as soon as we are seven or eight years old, what does the State do?  It puts a bandage over our eyes, takes us gently from the midst of the social circle which surrounds us, to plunge us, with our susceptible faculties, our impressible hearts, into the midst of Roman society.  It keeps us there for ten years at least, long enough to make an ineffaceable