In the Western world, governments and newspapers very often talk about “sacrifices” when drastic economic measures are required. The word is now used almost as often as technical terms like “inflation.” It is one of the many signs of an archaic presence. “Sacrifice,” in its current usage, is a cover word for a series of economic interventions that involve individuals forgoing certain benefits. But in this definition, the word loses its irreducible meaning: destruction. Here, nothing has to be destroyed. It is supposed that the goods to be renounced will go, the more the better, to meet other purposes. Part of the money that would have been squandered away—for leisure and pleasure—will go to replenish the funds of the State. The use of the word sacrifice would thus be incongruous, if it wasn’t adopted to emphasize how the supernatural counterpart of the individual is society itself: supernatural since it is able to utilize, to make productive in the realm of the visible, what is taken from the individual. At the same time, a real sacrifice goes on, a sacrifice that involves destruction, and which is happening uninterruptedly on the planet: sacrifice through experiment. Here it is presumed that every metaphysical memory of sacrifice is canceled out: in such an extreme way that, through some sinister lapsus, in laboratory jargon, when animals are eliminated after being used in experiments, they are described as “sacrificed.” But the same scientist who uses these words, once out of the laboratory, will fail to give any credence to the word sacrifice: he will regard it as a superstitious remnant, while economists feel no embarrassment about using it. The world is held in this silent grip between a sacrifice that is performed unnamed and a sacrifice that is continually named but is fictitious. Until one day the differences and contradictions in the use of the word sacrifice are blotted out: with war, the most lavish experiment of all. “Sacrifice” then occupies even more newspaper headlines than during economic crises—and everyone knows it involves blood, destruction, and death. Uniformed soldiers are interviewed and declare themselves ready for the “supreme sacrifice.” The whole nation declares itself ready each day for “sacrifice.” Finally, what remain are the monuments to fallen soldiers.