“Knowledge,” says M. de Tracy, “is the most precious of all our acquisition, since it directs and governs the employment of our forces, and renders them more prolific, in proportion as it is sounder and more extensive. No man can himself observe [p107] everything, and it is much easier to learn than to invent. But when several men communicate with each other, what is observed by one is soon known to the rest; and if there be among them but one person of superior ingenuity, precious discoveries speedily become the property of all. In such circumstances, knowledge is much more rapidly increased than it could be in a state of isolation, without taking into account the power of preserving it, and consequently of accumulating it from one generation to another.”
If the resources which nature has accumulated around man and placed at his disposal are varied, the human faculties themselves are not less so. We are not all equally endowed with strength, courage, intelligence, patience, or with artistic, literary, and industrial aptitudes. Without exchange, this diversity, far from contributing to our well-being, would contribute to our misery, each feeling less the advantage of those Faculties he possessed than the deprivation of those he wanted. Thanks to exchange, a man possessed of bodily strength may, up to a certain point, dispense with genius, and a man of intelligence with bodily strength; for by the admirable community which the power of exchange establishes among men, each individual participates in the distinctive qualities of his neighbours.
In order to obtain the satisfactions he desires, it is not enough, in most cases, to work—to exercise his faculties upon, or by means of, natural agents. He requires also to have tools, instruments, machines, provisions—in a word, Capital. Suppose a small tribe, composed of ten families, each, in working exclusively for itself, being obliged to engage in ten different employments. In that case each family must have ten sets of industrial apparatus. The tribe would require to possess ten ploughs, ten teams of oxen, ten forges, ten joiner’s and carpenter’s workshops, ten looms, etc.; while, with the power of exchange, a single plough, a single team, a single forge, a single loom, would be sufficient. It is impossible to conceive the economy of Capital which we owe to exchange.
The reader now sees clearly what constitutes the true power of exchange. It is not, as Condillac says, that it implies two gains, because of each of the contracting parties valuing more highly what he receives than what he gives. Neither is it that each gives away what is superfluous for what is necessary. It lies simply in this, that when one man says to another, “Do you only this, and I shall do only that, and we shall divide,” there is a better and more advantageous employment of labour, of faculties, of natural agents, of capital, and consequently there is more to divide. And these results take place to a still greater extent when [p108] three, ten, a hundred, a thousand, or several millions of men enter into the association.
The two propositions which I have laid down, then, are rigorously true, viz.:—
In isolation our wants exceed our powers;
In society our powers exceed our wants.
The first is true, seeing that the whole surface of our country would not maintain one man in a state of absolute isolation.
The second is true, seeing that, in fact, the population which is spread over that same surface multiplies and grows richer.
Progress of Exchange.—The primitive form of exchange is Barter. Two persons, one of whom desires an object, and is possessed of an object which the other desires, agree to cede these objects reciprocally, or they agree to work separately, each at one thing, but for the purpose of dividing the total product of their labour in arranged proportions. This is Barter, which is, as the Socialists would say, Exchange, traffic, commerce in embryo. We observe here two Desires as motives—two Efforts as means—two Satisfactions as results, or as the termination and completion of the entire cycle; and this evolution is not essentially different from the same evolution accomplished in a state of isolation, except that the desires and satisfactions have, as their nature requires, remained intransmissible, and that Efforts alone have been exchanged. In other words, the two persons have worked for each other, and have rendered each other reciprocal services.