What is seen what is unseen

In Ephesians , Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus praying,. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

And what does it mean for those eyes to be enlightened? The truth is that all of us are given spiritual eyes. He is calling us out of the cycle of worldly pursuit into a greater calling of eternal significance.

To live for heaven is to cast off that which is fleeting and temporary and seek that which can only be found with our heavenly Father. Take time in guided prayer to look to that which is unseen. Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of your heart.

Ask him to give you spiritual insight into your own life and the lives of others that you might call all those around you to live for heaven. Cast off those pursuits which tie you down to this world, and ask the Spirit to guide you into a lifestyle of seeking the kingdom of God above all else. May you discover the abundant life available to you in the Spirit as you worship your Father in both spirit and truth today.

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. What does 2 Corinthians mean? He wrote in the previous verse that his current suffering, though nearly unbearable at times 2 Corinthians , can't even be compared to the far weightier glory of eternity. Now he adds that this perspective requires a focus on what cannot be seen in this life, meaning the spiritual world. The things that are visible to humans in this life are here for just a moment and then gone.

They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the sons of Israel had light in their dwellings. Would that I had died and no eye had seen me!

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face,. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me.

You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. Prohibant was about to resign himself sadly to being merely as free as anyone else when a flash of inspiration shone in his brain. He remembered that in Paris there was a great law factory.

To ensure the execution of the aforesaid, a public force is organized, and in order to constitute the said public force, men and money are drawn from the nation.

Then, in order to keep these twenty thousand customs officers 53 in good heart and health, it would distribute twenty five million francs taken from these same blacksmiths, nail-makers, artisans and ploughmen. The security would be better done, it would cost me nothing, I would not be exposed to the brutality of the dealers, I would sell iron at my price and I would enjoy the sweet recreation of seeing our great nation shamefully bamboozled.

That would teach it to claim incessantly to be the precursor and promoter of all progress in Europe. That would be a smart move and is worth trying. Therefore, Mr. Prohibant went to the law factory. Perhaps on another occasion I will tell you the story of his underhand dealings; right now I merely want to talk about his very visible actions. He put the following consideration to the venerable legislators:.

I would prefer to sell it at fifteen and cannot do so because of this God damned Belgian iron. For each quintal 55 of iron I deliver to the public, instead of receiving ten francs, I will receive fifteen. I will become richer faster and will expand my operation, giving work to more workmen.

My workers and I will spend more money to the great benefit of our suppliers for several leagues around. As these suppliers will have more markets, they will give more orders to various other producers, and from one sector to another the entire country will increase its activity. This fortunate hundred sou coin that you drop into my coffer will radiate outwards to the far corners of the country an infinite number of concentric circles, just like a stone thrown into a lake.

Pleased to hear this speech and delighted to learn that it is so easy to increase the wealth of a nation by means of the law, the lawmakers voted for the restriction. And in fact, the law produced all the consequences forecast by Mr. The trouble was that it also produced others for, to do him justice, he had not reasoned falsely but incompletely. Petitioning for a privilege, he had pointed out those of its effects that are seen , leaving those that are not seen in the shadows.

He presented two people only, when there are three in the cast. Prohibant constitutes a benefit for him and for those whose work he is bound to stimulate. Unfortunately, it is not from the moon that the mysterious hundred sou coin comes, but rather from the pockets of a blacksmith, nail-maker, wheelwright, farrier, ploughman or builder, in short from the pocket of Jacques Bonhomme, 58 who will now pay it without receiving one milligram more of iron than he did at the time when he paid ten francs.

At first sight you have to see that this changes the question considerably, since very clearly the Profit made by Mr. Prohibant is offset by the Loss made by Jacques Bonhomme, and everything that Mr. The stone is merely cast into a particular point on the lake because it has been prevented by law from being cast into another. Therefore, what is not seen offsets what is seen and up to now in the remainder of the operation, there remains an injustice, and what is deplorable is that it is an injustice perpetrated by the law.

Nor is this all. I have said that a third person is always left in the shadow. I must bring him forward here so that he can show us a second loss of five francs. Then we will have the result of the entire operation. Jacques Bonhomme is the possessor of 15 francs, the fruit of his labors. We are still in the period in which he is free. What does he do with his 15 francs? He buys a fashionable article for 10 francs, and with this fashionable article he pays or the middleman pays on his behalf for the quintal of Belgian iron.

Jacques Bonhomme still has 5 francs left. Thus, with regard to national output , it is stimulated to the extent of 15 francs, as follows:. As for Jacques Bonhomme, for his 15 francs, he obtains two objects of his preference, as follows:. When Jacques Bonhomme hands over his 15 francs down to the last centime to Mr.

Prohibant for one quintal of iron, he is limited to whatever economic satisfaction is provided by this quintal of iron. He loses the benefit provided by a book or any other equivalent object.

He loses 5 francs. We agree on this; we cannot fail to agree on this, we cannot fail to agree that, where a policy of trade restriction raises the price of things, consumers lose the difference.

No it does not for, following the decree, it is merely stimulated as it was before, to the extent of 15 francs. The violence exercised at the border by Mr. Prohibant himself or that which he has exercised through the law may be considered to be very different from the moral point of view.

Some people think that plunder loses all its immorality when it is legal. For my part, I cannot imagine a circumstance that is worse. Be that as it may, what is certain is that the economic results are the same. View the matter from whatever angle you wish, but keep a sagacious eye and you will see that nothing good ever comes from plunder, whether legal or illegal. We do not deny that a profit of 5 francs results for Mr. Prohibant or his industry or, if you wish, for national production.

But we do claim that two losses also result, one for Jacques Bonhomme who pays 15 francs for what he had for 10 and the other for national production, which no longer receives the balance. Choose whichever of these two losses you please to set against the profit that we acknowledge.

The other will be no less of a dead loss. The Moral: The use of violence is not to produce but to destroy. If the use of violence was to produce, our France would be much richer than she is. This was an early attempt to dispel similar economic sophisms to those Bastiat was addressing in onwards. Dupin uses the made up person of M.

Prohibant to represent those who continue to cling to anti-free trade and anti-free market sentiments. According to the Budget papers for the Customs Service collected fr.

See Appendix 4 "French Government Finances See vol. In several of his statements of this Bastiat uses the analogy of stones or pebbles being dropped in bodies of water thus causing ripples which spread outwards to thousands of third parties who are affected.

He also talks about lines of radiation which stretch out to infinity. By this he meant that, for example, claims that tariffs result in a profit for one industry hides the fact that two other groups suffer losses: an equal loss for another industry and an equal loss for the consumer, resulting in a net "double incidence of loss" to the nation as a whole. In politics he was an intransigent Gallican Catholic, opponent of Protestantism, and a supporter of the idea of the divine right of kings.

He wrote a Discours sur l'histoire universelle Bastiat is having a joke here as this book is not what Jacques would probably buy if he had any spare cash.

May machines be cursed! What staggers me, though, is that there can be a single man who feels at ease with a doctrine like this. For in the end, if it is true, what is the logical consequence of this?

It is that there is no activity, well-being, wealth or happiness possible other than for people that are stupid or afflicted with mental immobility, to whom God has not given the disastrous gift of thinking, observing, putting things together, inventing or obtaining the greatest results using the least means.

That is not all. If this doctrine is true, since all men think and invent, since they all in fact from the first to the last and at every moment of their existence seek the co-operation of the forces of nature, to do more with less, to reduce either their labor or the labor for which they are paying, to achieve the greatest amount of economic satisfaction possible with the least amount of work, it has to be concluded that the entire human race is being drawn toward its downfall, precisely through this intelligent aspiration to progress that torments each of its members.

This being so, it ought to be verified by statistics, that the inhabitants of Lancaster are fleeing from this land of machines and are going to seek work in Ireland where machines are unknown; and by history, that barbarism darkened the eras of civilization and that civilization shines in times of ignorance and savagery. Obviously, in this heap of contradictions there is something that stands out and warns us that the problem hides the element of a solution that has not been sufficiently clarified.

This is the entire secret: behind what is seen lies what is not seen. I will endeavor to shed light on it. My case can be only a repetition of the preceding one, since the problem involved is identical. Men are naturally inclined, if they are not forcibly prevented from this, to seek low prices , that is to say, to seek that which, for an equal amount of satisfaction, saves them work, whether these low prices result from a skillful foreign producer or an efficient mechanical producer.

The theoretical objection made to this preference is the same in both cases. In both of them it is blamed for seeming to paralyze labor. In fact, what determines this preference for low prices is precisely the fact that labor is not made idle but more readily available. And this is why in both cases the same practical obstacle is put in its way, namely violence. Legislators prohibit foreign competition and forbid mechanical competition.

For what other means can there be to stop a natural preference in all men other than to deprive them of their liberty? It is true that in many countries legislators strike just one of these two forms of competition and limit themselves to complaining about the other.

This proves one single thing, which is that in these countries legislators are inconsistent. We should not be surprised at this. When taking the wrong road, people are always inconsistent, otherwise the human race would be annihilated.

An erroneous principle has never been seen and will never be seen to be taken to its logical conclusion.

I have said elsewhere that inconsistency is the limit of absurdity. I might have added that it is at the same time proof of it.

What does he do, however, but devise a system of ropes and weights that reduces the work by half. The human mind has made an advance and a worker immediately falls into the abyss of poverty. Alternatively, it may happen that Jacques Bonhomme continues to employ the two workers but now pays them just ten sous each, for they will compete with each other and offer their services at a discount.

This is how the rich grow ever richer and the poor ever poorer. We must reform society. Fortunately, both introduction and conclusion are entirely wrong, since behind the half of the phenomenon that is seen there is the other half that is not seen.

What is not seen is the franc saved by Jacques Bonhomme and the necessary effects of this saving. Since Jacques Bonhomme now spends just one franc on labor in order to achieve a given level of satisfaction as a result of his invention, he still has one more franc. If therefore there is a worker anywhere in the world who offers his idle hands, there is also somewhere in the world a capitalist who offers his unused franc.

These two elements come together and join forces. And it is as clear as daylight that between the supply and demand for work, between the supply and demand for pay, the relationship has changed not one whit. The invention and one worker, paid for with the first franc, now carry out the work that two workers did before. What has changed in the world then?

There is now an additional nation-wide satisfaction, in other words the invention, which is a free advance and a free source of profit for the human race. The wage-earning class, while experiencing momentary suffering, never benefit from them, since according to your own premises machines displace part of the national output, without reducing it, it is true, but also without increasing it.

It is not in the scope of this short article to reply to all the objections. Its sole aim is to combat a popularly held prejudice, one that is highly dangerous and very widespread. I wanted to prove that a new machine makes not only a certain number of workers available but also, and inevitably, the money needed to pay for them. These workers and this pay come together to produce what it was impossible to produce before the invention, from which it follows that the final result it produces is an increase in the amount of satisfaction for an equal input of labor.

First of all, the capitalist, the inventor, the first person who successfully uses the machine which is the reward for his genius and audacity. In this case, as we have just seen, he achieves a saving on the production costs which, however it is spent and it is always spent , makes use of as much labor as the machine has caused to be laid off. However, competition soon obliges him to lower his sales price to the extent of this saving itself.

And when this happens, it is no longer the inventor who benefits from the invention, but the purchaser of the product, the consumer, the general public, including the workers, in a word, the human race. And what is not seen is that the Saving procured for all consumers forms a fund from which wages are paid, replacing those eliminated by the machine.

As long as he sells the product at the same price, there is one less worker employed in making this particular product; that is what is seen.

However, there is one worker more employed using the franc that Jacques Bonhomme has saved; that is what is not seen. When, in the natural progress of things, Jacques Bonhomme is reduced to lowering the price of the product by one franc, he will no longer be making any saving; he will then no longer have a franc with which to make some new demand upon national output. Whoever buys the product pays one franc less for it, saves one franc and of necessity makes this saving available to the fund which finances wages; that is also what is not seen.

It has been said: Machines reduce production costs and the price of the product. The reduced price of the product triggers an increase in consumption, which requires an increase in production, and in the end the employment of as many workers or more, after the invention, as were needed before.

In support of this, mention is made of the printing industry, spinning, the press, etc. We would need to conclude that if the consumption of a particular product remains static or nearly so, machines would damage the demand for labor.

This is not so. Let us suppose that in a particular country all men wear hats. If, using a machine, people succeeded in reducing their price by half, it would not necessarily result that men would buy twice as many. Would it then be said in this instance that part of national production had been rendered inert?

Yes, according to the popular argument. No, according to mine; for while in this country no one would buy a single extra hat, the entire fund for wages would remain no less safe. The reduction in the flow of funds to the hat-making industry would reappear in the Savings made by all consumers, and from there would go on to finance all the labor that the machine had made redundant, and stimulate new development across all industries. And this is what happens.

I have seen journals that used to cost 80 francs, which now cost This is a saving of 32 francs for subscribers. It is not certain, or at any rate, not inevitable, that these 32 francs continue to go into journalism.

What is certain and essential is that, if they do not go in this direction, they go in another. One person will use them to buy more journals, another to eat better, a third to clothe himself better and a fourth to buy better furniture. In this way, industries are interdependent. They form a huge entity in which every part communicates with every other part through hidden channels. What is saved in one benefits all. See the previous note on Luddites, pp. This is a reference to chap.

VI ; and to Reflections addressed to Thiers p. If nature destined us to be health, I would almost venture to assert that the state of reflection is a state contrary to nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal. In all ages, but especially in the last few years, people have thought of making wealth universal by making credit universally available. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that, since the February Revolution, presses in Paris have vomited out more than ten thousand brochures recommending this solution to the Social Problem.

Alas, this solution is based on a pure optical illusion, if an illusion can be said to constitute a base. People start by confusing money with products and then they confuse paper-money with cash, and then from these two forms of confusion they claim to be plucking out something real.

With respect to this question, it is absolutely essential to forget money, coins, notes and other instruments by means of which products are passed from hand to hand, in order to see just the products themselves, which are the true basis of lending.

For when a ploughman borrows fifty francs to buy a plough, he is not really being lent fifty francs but a plough. And when a merchant borrows twenty thousand francs to buy a house, it is not twenty thousand francs that he owes, it is the house. Pierre may not be willing to lend his plough and Jacques may be willing to lend his money. What does Guillaume do then? Whatever the sum of specie and paper in circulation, the total number of borrowers cannot receive more ploughs, houses, tools, provisions or raw materials than the entire group of lenders is able to supply.

So we should get it firmly into our heads that any borrower implies a lender and any borrowing a loan. This having been said, what good can institutions of credit do? They can facilitate the means for borrowers and lenders to locate each other and enter into agreement. But what they cannot do is to increase instantly the quantity of objects borrowed and lent.

This is what would be necessary, however, if the aims of the Reformers were to be achieved, since they aspire to nothing less than putting ploughs, houses, tools, provisions and raw materials in the hands of all those who want them. Let us go deeper into the question, for there is something in it that is seen and something that is not seen. Let us endeavor to see both of these. Let us suppose that there is just one plough in the world and that two ploughmen would like to have it.

Pierre owns the only plough available in France. Jean and Jacques want to borrow it. Jean, through his probity, property and good reputation, offers guarantees for it. He is believed in ; he has credit. Jacques does not inspire confidence, or inspires less confidence.

Naturally, Pierre will lend his plough to Jean. Through the intervention of the State, poor Jacques has a plough. He will no longer be forced to dig the earth; he is now on the road to wealth. It is an asset for him and a benefit for the nation taken as a whole. What is not seen is that the plough has been allocated to Jacques only because it has not been allocated to Jean.

What is not seen is that if Jacques ploughs instead of digging, Jean will be reduced to digging instead of ploughing. As a result, what was desired as an increase in lending is merely a displacement of lending.

What is more, what is not seen is that this displacement implies two profound forms of injustice: an injustice to Jean who, after deserving and acquiring credit through his probity and activity, sees himself dispossessed; and an injustice to taxpayers who risk paying a debt that does not concern them. Will it be said that the government offers Jean the same facilities as Jacques? But since there is just one plough available, two cannot be lent.

The argument always returns to the claim that, thanks to the intervention of the State, more borrowing will occur than there are loans available, for the plough represents here the mass of capital available. It is true that I have reduced the operation to its simplest level, but use the same touchstone to test the most complicated governmental institutions of credit and you will be convinced that this is the only result they can produce: displacing credit and not increasing it.

In a given country and time there is just a certain sum of capital available, and all of it is invested. By guaranteeing those that are insolvent, the State may well increase the number of borrowers, thus raising the rate of interest always to the disadvantage of the taxpayer , but what it cannot do is to increase the number of lenders and the total amount of lending. Let no one attribute to me, however, a conclusion from which may God preserve me.

I say that the Law should not artificially favor borrowings, but I do not say that it should artificially hinder them. If, in our mortgage system or elsewhere, there are obstacles to the dissemination and application of credit, let them be removed; nothing would be better or more just. But this is all, with freedom, that should be demanded of the Law by Reformers worthy of the name. See Collected Works , vol. April , CW vol. See also ES1 XI.

But here are four speakers who struggle to control the rostrum. First of all, they all speak at the same time, then one after the other. What have they said? Certainly some very fine things on the power and grandeur of France, on the necessity of sowing in order to reap, on the brilliant future of our gigantic colony, on the advantage of sending off to distant places our surplus population, 70 etc. Magnificent examples of oratory which are always adorned with the following peroration:.

In doing this you will bring relief to French workers, stimulate work in Africa and expand trade in Marseilles. It is pure profit. Yes, that is true, if you consider the said fifty million only from the time that the State spends it, if you look at where this money is going, not where it came from, if you take account only of the good it will do on leaving the coffers of the tax collectors and not of the harm that has been done nor of the good that has been prevented when it entered these coffers.

Yes, from this limited point of view, it is pure profit. The house built on the Barbary coast, that is what is seen ; the port dug in on the Barbary coast, that is what is seen ; the work stimulated on the Barbary coast, that is what is seen ; fewer workers in France, that is what is seen ; a major flow of goods to Marseilles, that is also what is seen. But there is another thing that is not seen.

It is that the fifty million spent by the State cannot be spent, as they might have been, by taxpayers. From all the good attributed to public expenditure carried out we must deduct all the harm done by preventing private expenditure, unless we go so far as to say that Jacques Bonhomme would have done nothing with the hundred sous he had earned and that taxes had taken from him.

This is an absurd assertion, for if he took the trouble to earn them it is because he hoped to have the satisfaction of spending them. He would have rebuilt the fence around his garden and can no longer do so, that is what is not seen. He would have had his field marled 72 and can no longer do so, that is what is not seen.