How does this come about?  I will try to make it understood by some examples.

Let us go back to the thirteenth century.  Men who gave themselves up to the business of copying, received for this service a remuneration regulated by the general rate of the profits.  Among them is found one, who seeks and finds the means of rapidly multiplying copies of the same work.  He invents printing.  The first effect of this is, that the individual is enriched, while many more are impoverished.  At the first view, wonderful as the discovery is, one hesitates in deciding whether it is not more injurious than useful.  It seems to have introduced into the world, as I said above, an element of infinite inequality.  Guttenberg makes large profits by this invention, and perfects the invention by the profits, until all other copyists are ruined.  As for the public—­the consumer—­it gains but little, for Guttenberg takes care to lower the price of books only just so much as is necessary to undersell all rivals.

But the great Mind which put harmony into the movements of celestial bodies, could also give it to the internal mechanism of society.  We will see the advantages of this invention escaping from the individual, to become for ever the common patrimony of mankind.

The process finally becomes known.  Guttenberg is no longer alone in his art; others imitate him.  Their profits are at first considerable.  They are recompensed for being the first who made the effort to imitate the processes of the newly-invented art.  This again was necessary, in order that they might be induced to the effort, and thus forward the great and final result to which we approach.  They gain largely; but they gain less than the inventor, for competition has commenced its work.  The price of books now continually decreases.  The gains of the imitators diminish in proportion as the invention becomes older; and in the same proportion imitation becomes less meritorious.  Soon the new object of industry attains its normal condition; in other words, the remuneration of printers is no longer an exception to the general rules of remuneration, and, like that of copyists formerly, it is only regulated by the general rate of profits.  Here then the producer, as such, holds only the old position.  The discovery, however, has been made; the saving of time, labor, effort, for a fixed result, for a certain number of volumes, is realized.  But in what is this manifested?  In the cheap price of books.  For the good of whom?  For the good of the consumer—­of society—­of humanity.  Printers, having no longer any peculiar merit, receive no longer a peculiar remuneration.  As men—­as consumers—­they no doubt participate in the advantages which the invention confers upon the community; but that is all.  As printers, as producers, they are placed upon the ordinary footing of all other producers.  Society pays them for their labor, and not for the usefulness of the invention. That has become a gratuitous benefit, a common heritage to mankind.