It is not surprising, therefore, that the more abundant capitals are,
the lower is the interest.
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.
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