If we study the feudal era, we will find the great majority of the population lived almost without needs and the rest had only a small number of them. The land sufficed for everyone, so to speak, comfort was nowhere to be found, subsistence was widespread. It is necessary to establish this point of departure in order to understand what I am going to say.
As time passed, the cultivators of the soil conceived of new tastes. Satisfaction of basic needs was no longer enough. The peasant, without leaving his field, wished to be better lodged, better dressed; he glimpsed the pleasures of comfort and wished to procure them. On the other hand, the class that had lived on the land without cultivating it extended the boundaries of its pleasures; its enjoyments became less showy but more complicated and more varied. A thousand needs unknown to the medieval nobility came to be coveted by their descendants. Large numbers of men who lived on the land left it to find ways to satisfy the new needs that emerged. Agriculture, once everyone's occupation, was now only that of the majority. Next to those who lived on the produce of the land without working is a large class who live by their industry without cultivating the soil.
Each century, released from the Creator's hands, develops the human mind, extending the boundaries of his thought, increasing his desires, increasing his power; the poor and the rich, each in their own sphere, conceived of the idea of new enjoyments of which their ancestors were ignorant. To satisfy these new needs which could not be satisfied by farming, a part of the population left the land every year to dedicate themselves to industry.
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