Now, the thesis which I maintain at this moment is the
more difficult because in direct opposition to the general
tendency, and because I must directly overturn it myself by its
contradiction.
I pray, then, that I may be told how it is possible to make
appeal to the principles of sociability, fraternity, and
solidarity, when society itself rejects every solidary and
fraternal transaction? At the beginning of each industry, at the
first gleam of a discovery, the man who invents is isolated;
society abandons him and remains in the background. To put
it better, this man, relatively to the idea which he has
conceived and the realization of which he pursues, becomes in
himself alone entire society. He has no longer any associates,
no longer any collaborators, no longer any sureties; everybody
shuns him: on him alone falls the responsibility; to him alone,
then, the advantages of the speculation.
But, it is insisted, this is blindness on the part of society, an
abandonment of its most sacred rights and interests, of the
welfare of future generations; and the speculator, better
informed or more fortunate, cannot fairly profit by the monopoly
which universal ignorance gives into his hands.
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