Thus the very nature of things, as well as his own wants,
indicates to the laborer the order in which he should effect the
production of the values that make up his well-being. Our law of
proportionality, then, is at once physical and logical, objective
and subjective; it has the highest degree of certainty. Let us
pursue the application.
Of all the products of labor, none perhaps has cost longer and
more patient efforts than the calendar. Nevertheless, there is
none the enjoyment of which can now be procured more cheaply, and
which, consequently, by our own definitions, has become more
necessary. How, then, shall we explain this change? Why has the
calendar, so useless to the early hordes, who only needed the
alternation of night and day, as of winter and summer, become at
last so indispensable, so unexpensive, so perfect? For, by a
marvelous harmony, in social economy all these adjectives are
interconvertible. How account, in short, by our law of
proportion, for the variability of the value of the calendar?
In order that the labor necessary to the production of the
calendar might be performed, might be possible, man had to find
means of gaining time from his early occupations and from those
which immediately followed them.
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