Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 215

When shall we be done with these puerile declamations? When will _tartuferie_ be finally banished from science? When shall we cease to exhibit this nauseous contradiction between our professions and our practice? We hoot at and execrate personal _interest_; in other words, we denounce what is useful and good (for to say that all men are interested in anything is to say that the thing is good in itself), as if personal interest were not the necessary, eternal, and indestructible mainspring to which Providence has confided human perfectibility. Are we not represented as being all angels of disinterestedness? And does the thought never occur to those who say so, that the public begins to see with disgust that this affected language disfigures the pages of those very writers who axe most successful in filling their own pockets at the public expense? Oh! affectation! affectation! thou art verily the besetting sin of our times!

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 215 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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