Economy is to Employ What One Has

Extract

To set fire to a field of ripe wheat or to leave the ground untilled surely amounts to almost the same result? Everything in this world is made to be of service, and, because there is only what is necessary for all, the bread that is not sown, like that which is thrown away, is taken from someone. It is bad, it is monstrous to pay thousands of francs for a dinner given to Ambassadors, five hundred francs or more for a bottle of champagne at a fashionable dance, when so many people are hungry; but to put the amount in a woollen stocking, is as bad, as monstrous. Even worse sometimes. For, at least, some persons profit by these follies, and if it is a very despicable means of livelihood they have found, it may be that they themselves are not all despicable. Whilst as for this money which men pile up and set by for their hypothetical needs, to which they presently sacrifice even the satisfaction of these needs, what does it serve? There was someone in this world for whom it was indispensable and who is thus deprived of it. If we want a seed to germinate and fructify, we do not, unless we are mad, enclose it in a box. In being used it is undoubtedly destroyed, but it bears fruit a twentyfold.