Note 37 — Chapter IV · THE FRENCH SCHOOL (THE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT).
Henry P. (Henry Pomeroy) Horton translation
“The struggle for existence and well-being is regulated by social laws. If these were perfect, each individual could satisfy his wants in an equitable measure, that is to say in the measure of his faculties, his labor, and the service he renders to the community. Crimes would then be diminished in an enormous proportion, but they would not be suppressed, for there would still be inevitable competitions, and the time will probably never come when, on the one hand, each individual will have just the wants that his social worth will permit him to satisfy legally, and, on the other, will have sufficient virtue to renounce the satisfaction of wants, even factitious ones, which he has once contracted without being able to comply with the conditions which the most just law imposes for this satisfaction.”37