CHAPTER I. METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION.

Produced by Mike Lough

WHAT IS PROPERTY?

AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT

By P. J. Proudhon

CONTENTS.

P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS

PREFACE

FIRST MEMOIR

CHAPTER I.

METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION

CHAPTER II.

PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW

AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.--DEFINITIONS

% 1. Property as a Natural Right.

% 2. Occupation as the Title to Property.

% 3. Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property.

CHAPTER III.

LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY

% 1. The Land cannot be appropriated.

% 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property.

% 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property.

% 4. Labor.--That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate

Natural Wealth.

% 5. That Labor leads to Equality of Property.

% 6. That in Society all Wages are Equal.

% 7. That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of

Equality of Fortunes.

% 8. That, from the stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys

Property.

CHAPTER IV.

THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE

DEMONSTRATION. AXIOM.

Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over

any thing which he has stamped as his own.

FIRST PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing.

SECOND PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because, wherever it exists, Production

costs more than it is worth.

THIRD PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because, with a given Capital, Production

is proportional to Labor, not to Property.

FOURTH PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because it is Homicide.

FIFTH PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself.

Appendix to the Fifth Proposition.

SIXTH PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny.

SEVENTH PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it

loses them; in hoarding them, it nullifies them; and, in

using them as Capital, it turns them against Production.

EIGHTH PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because its Power of Accumulation is

infinite, and is exercised only over Finite Quantities.

NINTH PROPOSITION

Property is Impossible, because it is powerless against Property.

TENTH PROPOSITION.

Property is Impossible, because it is the Negation of Equality.

CHAPTER V.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND IN JUSTICE,

AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT AND OF RIGHT.

PART 1.

% 1. Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals.

% 2. Of the First and Second Degrees of Sociability.

% 3. Of the Third Degree of Sociability.

PART I 1.

% 1. Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.

% 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property.

% 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.

SECOND MEMOIR

LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY

P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.

The correspondence [1] of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of which we

publish to-day, has been collected since his death by the faithful

and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a few friends. It was

incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve, but the portion with which

the illustrious academician became acquainted was sufficient to allow

him to estimate it as a whole with that soundness of judgment which

characterized him as a literary critic.

He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's

interpretation of the author's views as in any sense authoritative;

advising them, rather, to await the publication of the remainder

of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an opinion for

themselves.--Translator.

In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not

forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve

thus judges the correspondence of the great publicist:--

"The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular

friends, will always be of value; we can always learn something from

them, and here is the proper place to determine the general character of

his correspondence.

"It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated;

and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the

correspondence of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that

most of his books will be only accessory to and corroborative of this.

At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of his

letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who

consult him in their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his

position.

"There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence.

There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with

questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the

job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness, mingling

it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming

from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and

classification.

"After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty,

and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should

put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial,

devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting

it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and

pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words

only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think

it is you, individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing

themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters

are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution and the

favorite pose of their writers.

"I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious

authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity.

We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished,

charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes

us with the best example of this class.

"Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits.

In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he

addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction and doctrine, to

write does not weary him; to be questioned does not annoy him. When

approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile

curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he

replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes

in writing; for, as he remarks, 'if there be some points which

correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by

conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the

case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed,

which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than

ten hours of oral intercourse!' In writing to you he does not hesitate

to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and

superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself

defeated--it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the

breaks, the variations, in short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history

of his mind is in his letters; there it must be sought.

"Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the page

of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and

that without losing patience, without getting confused, without

sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public man, devoted to the

propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him,

is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold,

uniform, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste,

no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to chance;

the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided,

indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the

chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business

and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the

letters of his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace.

"But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he does

not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in

reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet

from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he

discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to

him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly

search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially

from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in

the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an

impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual security. We feel

his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in

this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the

same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If

he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical

anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of

conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a

father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a

rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of

Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions

to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter

becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like

no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no

rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he employs towards

his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest

in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the

family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command

of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now

and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust

or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as

it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I

right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will

one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works?"

Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his

correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have

been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we

make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in

a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother were

employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though

a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty

of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a

common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as

they who knew her say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the

expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon. She

it was especially that Proudhon resembled: she and his grandfather

Tournesi, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told him, and whose

courageous deeds he has described in his work on "Justice." Proudhon,

who always felt a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave

her name to the elder of his daughters. In 1814, when Besancon was

blockaded, Mouillere, which stood in front of the walls of the town, was

destroyed in the defence of the place; and Proudhon's father established

a cooper's shop in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest,

but simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five

children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in

poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in

the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail to read

that beautiful and precious page of his work on "Justice," in which he

describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age

of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent

him from studying.

His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, the former owner of the

brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was engaged in

the education of his children.

Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He was

necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares and restraints

sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded nevertheless in his

studies; he showed great perseverance. His family were so poor that they

could not afford to furnish him with books; he was obliged to borrow

them from his comrades, and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself

told us that he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door,

that he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having

no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his

studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded with

crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.

"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon,"

says Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his

teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant

frequenter of the town library. One curiosity led to another, and he

called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The

learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier,

M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, 'But, my little

friend, what do you wish to do with all these books?' The child raised

his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: 'What's that to you?' And

the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day."

Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He

entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader. Becoming,

soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity. At

Toulon, where he found himself without money and without work, he had a

scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on "Justice."

Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being

filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position

of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no

knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until

six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting

his trade in order to become a teacher.

Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and

who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his

twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at

the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal

of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon. The book was

in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.

"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his

attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office,

did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin

scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance; and soon

there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship: a

friendship of the intellect and of the heart."

Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age,

and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to

us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire.

"PARIS, December 5, 1831.

"MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even

dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter; I will

tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forward an account of

your ideas to M. J. de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to them,

and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time

ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be

punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless

in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder,

and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to

the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world

for conducting a negotiation with despatch.

"I have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you are

too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you could not

accommodate your mind and character to the childish notions common

to their age and station. In short, he is what the world calls a good

father; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do

this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not

very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with

wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to

the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less

obliging than the worthy Abbe P. of our acquaintance, would readily

dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would not suit you, you

who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are refused; let us dismiss

the matter from our minds. Perhaps another time my solicitude will be

less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus

disposing of you almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the

motives which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement

in the ways of this world.

"I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and

beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it,

a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my

friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in

it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all

means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect your

faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of

your profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen,

which I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the

path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is

that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel discouraged? Struggle,

morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau

groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him.

You are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have

divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing

that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his

acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined

your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first time in my life,

I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen

or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the

prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as

a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory. This is my

prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably,

by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a

philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name

will occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those

of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and

those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in

the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in

a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion,

seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape

your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that

active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your

place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go

where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the

doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether you want to or not.

I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing

to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to

which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of

passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he

plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return

for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young

man's future.

"When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase

which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans.

To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so; and when this

fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place

without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town,

provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a

bed, books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark,

obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent

so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember

it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time ever return? Shall

we one day meet again? Here my life is restless, uncertain, precarious,

and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I

live in idleness, I ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my

books are forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,

and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I lie

down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the

following day. What is the object of these walks, you will ask. I make

visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people. Then a fit of

curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings: there are museums,

libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to

visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all

these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take

the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which

I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.

"But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too

much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency; no,

I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know yet what my

calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted;

I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any: but

what matters it? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a

word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.

"Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere

phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor

printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers? Have you a

sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to

attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which

would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No;

you are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned,

you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations which that

word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it. That

friend is myself: put me to the test.

"GUSTAVE FALLOT."

It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had

already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for

research and investigation, it was in the direction of philosophical,

rather than of economical and social, questions.

Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried on

a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of

ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing

a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original

Hebrew.

"In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself, and,

as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of

comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works

on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire, through this

desire of his to investigate everything, an extensive knowledge of

theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons to think that he

had been in an ecclesiastical seminary."

Towards 1836, Proudhon left the house of Gauthier, and, in company

with an associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His

contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as

in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838,

Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did

not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged

by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard

pension. This pension consisted of an income of fifteen hundred francs

bequeathed to the Academy of Besancon by Madame Suard, the widow of the

academician, to be given once in three years to the young man residing

in the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science, and

not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besancon SHOULD DEEM BEST

FITTED FOR A LITERARY OR SCIENTIFIC CAREER, OR FOR THE STUDY OF LAW

OR OF MEDICINE. The first to win the Suard pension was Gustave Fallot.

Mauvais, who was a distinguished astronomer in the Academy of Sciences,

was the second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself, he

had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged to write a

letter to the Academy of Besancon. In a phrase of this letter, the terms

of which he had to modify, though he absolutely refused to change

its spirit, Proudhon expressed his firm resolve to labor for the

amelioration of the condition of his brothers, the working-men.

The only thing which he had then published was an "Essay on General

Grammar," which appeared without the author's signature. While

reprinting, at Besancon, the "Primitive Elements of Languages,

Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with those of the Latin and

French," by the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon had enlarged the edition of his

"Essay on General Grammar."

The date of the edition, 1837, proves that he did not at that time think

of competing for the Suard pension. In this work, which continued and

completed that of the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon adopted the same point

of view, that of Moses and of Biblical tradition. Two years later, in

February, 1839, being already in possession of the Suard pension, he

addressed to the Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize,

a memoir entitled: "Studies in Grammatical Classification and the

Derivation of some French words." It was his first work, revised and

presented in another form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute,

none of which gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted,

one of them to memoir No. 4; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at

Besancon. The judges were MM. Amedde Jaubert, Reinaud, and Burnouf.

"The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting of the

five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial attention to

manuscripts No. 1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant

the prize to either of these works, because they do not appear to

be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds in No. 4 some

ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the

Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous

conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of

the committee to pursue the experimental and comparative method."

Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugene Burnouf,

and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of

Bopp and his successors, he definitively abandoned an hypothesis which

had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres.

He then sold, for the value of the paper, the remaining copies of the

"Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they were still lying in a

grocer's back-shop.

A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with

the attractive name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which

the author was beaten. His enemies, and at that time there were many of

them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter.

Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives some interesting details of

this lawsuit.

In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest

proposed by the Academy of Besancon on the question of the utility

of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained honorable mention,

together with a medal which was awarded him, in open session, on the

24th of August, 1839. The reporter of the committee, the Abbe Doney,

since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the unquestionable

superiority of his talent.

"But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted

dangerous theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical

politics and social organization, where upright intentions and zeal for

the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions."

Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his

ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like many others,

seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well that, having asked

Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider himself indebted in

some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles Fourier, we received

from him the following reply: "I have certainly read Fourier, and have

spoken of him more than once in my works; but, upon the whole, I do not

think that I owe anything to him. My real masters, those who have caused

fertile ideas to spring up in my mind, are three in number: first, the

Bible; next, Adam Smith; and last, Hegel."

Freely confessed in the "Celebration of Sunday," the influence of the

Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir on property.

Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas of his own; but

is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish law to be found in its

condemnation of usurious interest and its denial of the right of

personal appropriation of land?

The first memoir on property appeared in 1840, under the title, "What is

Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government."

Proudhon dedicated it, in a letter which served as the preface, to the

Academy of Besancon. The latter, finding itself brought to trial by its

pensioner, took the affair to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve,

with all possible haste.

The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn from the bold

defender of the principle of equality of conditions. M. Vivien, then

Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited to prosecute the

author, wished first to obtain the opinion of the economist, Blanqui, a

member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon having

presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui was appointed

to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's views, shielded

him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui, the author was not prosecuted.

He was always grateful to MM. Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome

conduct in the matter.

M. Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by "Le Moniteur," on

the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proudhon to address to him, in

the form of a letter, his second memoir on property, which appeared

in April, 1841. Proudhon had endeavored, in his first memoir, to

demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of conditions is the true

principle of right and of government. In the "Letter to M. Blanqui," he

passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this principle

gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern

society.

In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or

a Letter to M. Victor Considerant, Editor of 'La Phalange,' in Reply

to a Defence of Property." Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested

itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam Smith find, in the

principle of equality, the first of all the laws which govern wages?

There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all as

springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first

memoir. Thus, in humanity, there are two principles,--one which leads us

to equality, another which separates us from it. By the former, we

treat each other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say

enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout the

three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth to

the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the

idea of antinomy or contre-loi.

The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of Besancon;

and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within

a week. He read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was

acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher,

an inquirer, a savant.

In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a

large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions of social

economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics

are treated at considerable length.

Released from his printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year,

Proudhon had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier

Bros., carriers by water between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom

was Proudhon's companion in childhood, conceived the happy thought

of employing him, of utilizing his ability in their business, and in

settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose. Besides

the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make

out, and which retarded the publication of the "System of Economical

Contradictions," until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which,

before it appeared in pamphlet form, was published in the "Revue des

Economistes,"--"Competition between Railroads and Navigable Ways."

"Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he published in

March, 1845, in the "Revue Independante," during that Lenten season when

Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves that, though devoting himself

with ardor to the study of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost

his interest in questions of religious history. Among his writings on

these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished,

we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian

heresies, and of the struggle of Christianity against Caesarism.

We have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters. Having

no knowledge of the German language, he could not have read the works

of Hegel, which at that time had not been translated into French. It

was Charles Grun, a German, who had come to France to study the various

philosophical and socialistic systems, who gave him the substance of the

Hegelian ideas. During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grun had some long

conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the

ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but the form

of the important work on which he labored after 1843, and which was

published in 1846 by Guillaumin.

Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he

demonstrates with wonderful ability in the "System of Economical

Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence of two

laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is possible,

not only with two different things, but with one and the same thing.

Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which

created them, all the economical categories are rational,--competition,

monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division

of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit. But, like communism and

population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not

only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder

is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of the

work,--"Philosophy of Misery." No category can be suppressed; the

opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance, which exists in each of them,

cannot be suppressed.

Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by the

Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis,

which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis. Afterwards, while at

work upon his book on "Justice," he saw that the antinomical terms do

not cancel each other, any more than the opposite poles of an electric

pile destroy each other; that they are the procreative cause of motion,

life, and progress; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion,

which would be death, but their equilibrium,--an equilibrium for ever

unstable, varying with the development of society.

On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon

announced, as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem." This

work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke

out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles. The two

pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848, before he became editor

of "Le Representant du Peuple," bear the same title,--"Solution of the

Social Problem." The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early

acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in

it Proudhon, in advance of all others, energetically opposed the

establishment of national workshops. The second, "Organization of

Credit and Circulation," sums up in a few pages his idea of economical

progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and

wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this

manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal

increase of wages are, unconsciously following a back-track, opposed to

all their interests.

After having published in "Le Representant du Peuple," the statutes of

the Bank of Exchange,--a bank which was to make no profits, since it

was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount

commercial paper with out interest, charging only a commission

sufficient to defray its running expenses,--Proudhon endeavored, in

a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These

articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title,

"Resume of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange." His other articles,

those which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of

events, have been collected in another volume,--"Revolutionary Ideas."

Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of

candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen

which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of

votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections,

which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by

seventy-seven thousand votes.

After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which

caused the first suspension of "Le Representant du Peuple." It was at

that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being

referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report

of M. Thiers, and then the speech which Proudhon delivered, on the

31st of July, in reply to this report. "Le Representant du Peuple,"

reappearing a few days later, he wrote, a propos of the law requiring

journals to give bonds, his famous article on "The Malthusians" (August

10, 1848).

Ten days afterwards, "Le Representant du Peuple," again suspended,

definitively ceased to appear. "Le Peuple," of which he was the

editor-in-chief, and the first number of which was issued in the early

part of September, appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient

bonds; it afterwards appeared daily, with a double number once a week.

Before "Le Peuple" had obtained its first bond, Proudhon published a

remarkable pamphlet on the "Right to Labor,"--a right which he denied

in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was during the same

period that he proposed, at the Poissonniere banquet, his Toast to the

Revolution.

Proudhon, who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and

proposed in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the

reluctance of the organizers of the banquet, the illustrious president

of the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention

to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim at last

with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais being accepted by

the organizers, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The

night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister

Senart by Minister Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the

government, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and,

tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon abstained from

voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not

attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards,

Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le

Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the

organizers in his presence, "in abstaining from voting to-day on

the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause."

Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on

the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed

minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him

in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by

telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in

spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation, whether

with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage

to publicly declare itself Socialist.

On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which

was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before,

Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with

Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less

bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly

proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the

election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made

a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet

which is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet

on the Presidency." An opponent of this institution, against which he

had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no

part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing the

chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the

latter should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly

would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of

form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in

the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of

"La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for

having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain,

attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which

overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain

from answering him. At length, driven to an extremity, he became

aggressive himself, and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time,

Proudhon positively refused to fight; he would not have fought with

Felix Pyat, had not his courage been called in question.

On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw

that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the

coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was

already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate to openly attack

the man who had just received five millions of votes. He wanted to break

the idol; he succeeded only in getting prosecuted and condemned himself.

The prosecution demanded against him was authorized by a majority of the

Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that

occasion. Declared guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849,

to three years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand

francs.

Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of a Bank of

Exchange, which was to operate without capital with a sufficient number

of merchants and manufacturers for adherents. This bank, which he then

called the Bank of the People, and around which he wished to gather the

numerous working-people's associations which had been formed since

the 24th of February, 1848, had already obtained a certain number of

subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven

thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's sentence

forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile. He did not hesitate

to abandon his project and return the money to the subscribers. He

explained the motives which led him to this decision in an article in

"Le Peuple."

Having fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence

to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in a house in the

Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding-place he sent articles almost every

day, signed and unsigned, to "Le Peuple." In the evening, dressed in a

blouse, he went to some secluded spot to take the air. Soon, emboldened

by habit, he risked an evening promenade upon the Boulevards, and

afterwards carried his imprudence so far as to take a stroll by daylight

in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was

recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in

the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.

Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte-Pelagie,

he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which

ended with the violent suppression of "Le Peuple." He then began to

write the "Confessions of a Revolutionist," published towards the end

of the year. He had been again transferred to Sainte-Pelagie, when he

married, in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piegard, a young working

girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him four

daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their

father. Stephanie died in 1873.

In October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La Voix

du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were

published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat.

The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so

displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens,

where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards taken back

to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine in reference to

an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended by M. Cremieux and

acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-Pelagie, where

he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852.

"La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of

the 31st of May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of

1850. Established by the aid of the principal members of the Mountain,

this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors.

In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the

"General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which,

after having shown the logical series of unitary governments,--from

monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the

people, which is the last,--he opposes the ideal of an-archy or

self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.

At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of

1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of

1848, and justly angry with the national representative body which

had just passed the law of the 31st of May, 1850, demanded direct

legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any

price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as

destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his

friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the

antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution

intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social

reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is

powerless; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern directly.

For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the greatest number is

of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently the least capable

of understanding and effecting reforms. In regard to the antinomy,

pointed out by him, of liberty and government,--whether the latter be

monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form,--Proudhon, whose chief

desire was to preserve liberty, naturally sought the solution in the

free contract. But though the free contract may be a practical solution

of purely economical questions, it cannot be made use of in politics.

Proudhon recognized this ten years later, when his beautiful study on

"War and Peace" led him to find in the FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE the exact

equilibrium of liberty and government.

"The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d' Etat" appeared in

1852, a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror

prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish his

book without express permission from the government. He succeeded in

obtaining this permission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a letter which

he published at the same time with the work. The latter being offered

for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would not be allowed to publish

any more books of the same character. At that time he entertained the

idea of writing a universal history entitled "Chronos." This project was

never fulfilled.

Already the father of two children, and about to be presented with a

third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a

living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the

"Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later, in 1857, after

having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging

in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, G. Duchene.

Meantime, he vainly sought permission to establish a journal, or review.

This permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government

always suspected him after the publication of the "Social Revolution

Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat."

Towards the end of 1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled

"The Philosophy of Progress." Entirely inoffensive as it was, this

pamphlet, which he endeavored to send into France, was seized on the

frontier. Proudhon's complaints were of no avail.

The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial

society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east of France,

employed Proudhon to write several memoirs in support of this demand.

The grant was given to another company. The author was offered an

indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was customary in such cases)

by the company which received the grant. It is needless to say that

Proudhon would accept nothing. Then, wishing to explain to the public,

as well as to the government, the end which he had in view, he

published the work entitled "Reforms to be Effected in the Management of

Railroads."

Towards the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on

"Justice," when he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he

recovered with great difficulty. Ever afterwards his health was

delicate.

At last, on the 22d of April, 1858, he published, in three large

volumes, the important work upon which he had labored since 1854. This

work had two titles: the first, "Justice in the Revolution and in the

Church;" the second, "New Principles of Practical Philosophy, addressed

to His Highness Monseigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop of Besancon."

On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely been time to read the

work, an order was issued by the magistrate for its seizure; on the

28th the seizure was effected. To this first act of the magistracy,

the author of the incriminated book replied on the 11th of May in a

strongly-motived petition, demanding a revision of the concordat of

1802; or, in other words, a new adjustment of the relations between

Church and State. At bottom, this petition was but the logical

consequence of the work itself. An edition of a thousand copies being

published on the 17th of May, the "Petition to the Senate" was regarded

by the public prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences

discovered in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was

seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author appealed

to the Senate in a second "Petition," which was deposited with the

first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and

guarantee, according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles

of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon

appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and

the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police

magistrate, which condemned him to three years' imprisonment, a fine of

four thousand francs, and the suppression of his work. It is needless

to say that the publisher and printers were also condemned by the sixth

chamber.

Proudhon lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819, in

the absence of which he would have been liable to a new prosecution,

gave him the power to publish previous to the hearing. Having decided

to make use of the means which the law permitted, he urged in vain the

printers who were prosecuted with him to lend him their aid. He then

demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect

that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819,

allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing

it. The attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for

Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross

the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the best of

Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice prosecuted by the Church;

An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon by the Police

Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858." A very close

discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth chamber, it was

at the same time an excellent resume of his great work.

Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859, after

the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he at first thought

himself included in it. But the imperial government, consulted by his

friends, notified him that, in its opinion, and in spite of the contrary

advice of M. Faustin Helie, his condemnation was not of a political

character. Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors

of immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and waited

patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return to France.

In Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friendships, he

published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edition of his great work

on "Justice." Each number contained, in addition to the original text

carefully reviewed and corrected, numerous explanatory notes and some

"Tidings of the Revolution." In these tidings, which form a sort of

review of the progress of ideas in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully

asserts that, after having for a long time marched at the head of the

progressive nations, France has become, without appearing to suspect it,

the most retrogressive of nations; and he considers her more than once

as seriously threatened with moral death.

The Italian war led him to write a new work, which he published in 1861,

entitled "War and Peace." This work, in which, running counter to

a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination, he

pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic

and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary

government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of

his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right

of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new

publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always

combated, "this man is only a sophist."

Led by his previous studies to test every thing by the question of

right, Proudhon asks, in his "War and Peace," whether there is a real

right of which war is the vindication, and victory the demonstration.

This right, which he roughly calls the right of the strongest or the

right of force, and which is, after all, only the right of the most

worthy to the preference in certain definite cases, exists, says

Proudhon, independently of war. It cannot be legitimately vindicated

except where necessity clearly demands the subordination of one will to

another, and within the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever

involving the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right

of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force, is

as unacceptable as universal monarchy. Hence, until equilibrium is

established and recognized between States or national forces, there must

be war. War, says Proudhon, is not always necessary to determine which

side is the strongest; and he has no trouble in proving this by examples

drawn from the family, the workshop, and elsewhere. Passing then to the

study of war, he proves that it by no means corresponds in practice to

that which it ought to be according to his theory of the right of force.

The systematic horrors of war naturally lead him to seek a cause for

it other than the vindication of this right; and then only does the

economist take it upon himself to denounce this cause to those who, like

himself, want peace. The necessity of finding abroad a compensation

for the misery resulting in every nation from the absence of economical

equilibrium, is, according to Proudhon, the ever real, though ever

concealed, cause of war. The pages devoted to this demonstration and to

his theory of poverty, which he clearly distinguishes from misery and

pauperism, shed entirely new light upon the philosophy of history. As

for the author's conclusion, it is a very simple one. Since the treaty

of Westphalia, and especially since the treaties of 1815, equilibrium

has been the international law of Europe. It remains now, not to destroy

it, but, while maintaining it, to labor peacefully, in every nation

protected by it, for the equilibrium of economical forces. The last line

of the book, evidently written to check imperial ambition, is: "Humanity

wants no more war."

In 1861, after Garibaldi's expedition and the battle of Castelfidardo,

Proudhon immediately saw that the establishment of Italian unity would

be a severe blow to European equilibrium. It was chiefly in order to

maintain this equilibrium that he pronounced so energetically in

favor of Italian federation, even though it should be at first only

a federation of monarchs. In vain was it objected that, in being

established by France, Italian unity would break European equilibrium in

our favor. Proudhon, appealing to history, showed that every State which

breaks the equilibrium in its own favor only causes the other States to

combine against it, and thereby diminishes its influence and power. He

added that, nations being essentially selfish, Italy would not fail,

when opportunity offered, to place her interest above her gratitude.

To maintain European equilibrium by diminishing great States and

multiplying small ones; to unite the latter in organized federations,

not for attack, but for defence; and with these federations, which, if

they were not republican already, would quickly become so, to hold in

check the great military monarchies,--such, in the beginning of 1861,

was the political programme of Proudhon.

The object of the federations, he said, will be to guarantee, as far as

possible, the beneficent reign of peace; and they will have the

further effect of securing in every nation the triumph of liberty over

despotism. Where the largest unitary State is, there liberty is in the

greatest danger; further, if this State be democratic, despotism without

the counterpoise of majorities is to be feared. With the federation, it

is not so. The universal suffrage of the federal State is checked by the

universal suffrage of the federated States; and the latter is offset in

its turn by PROPERTY, the stronghold of liberty, which it tends, not to

destroy, but to balance with the institutions of MUTUALISM.

All these ideas, and many others which were only hinted at in his

work on "War and Peace," were developed by Proudhon in his subsequent

publications, one of which has for its motto, "Reforms always, Utopias

never." The thinker had evidently finished his evolution.

The Council of State of the canton of Vaud having offered prizes for

essays on the question of taxation, previously discussed at a congress

held at Lausanne, Proudhon entered the ranks and carried off the first

prize. His memoir was published in 1861 under the title of "The Theory

of Taxation."

About the same time, he wrote at Brussels, in "L'Office de Publicite,"

some remarkable articles on the question of literary property, which

was discussed at a congress held in Belgium, These articles must not be

confounded with "Literary Majorats," a more complete work on the same

subject, which was published in 1863, soon after his return to France.

Arbitrarily excepted from the amnesty in 1859, Proudhon was pardoned two

years later by a special act. He did not wish to take advantage of this

favor, and seemed resolved to remain in Belgium until the 2d of June,

1863, the time when he was to acquire the privilege of prescription,

when an absurd and ridiculous riot, excited in Brussels by an article

published by him on federation and unity in Italy, induced him to hasten

his return to France. Stones were thrown against the house in which

he lived, in the Faubourg d'Ixelles. After having placed his wife and

daughters in safety among his friends at Brussels, he arrived in Paris

in September, 1862, and published there, "Federation and Italian Unity,"

a pamphlet which naturally commences with the article which served as a

pretext for the rioters in Brussels.

Among the works begun by Proudhon while in Belgium, which death did not

allow him to finish, we ought to mention a "History of Poland," which

will be published later; and, "The Theory of Property," which appeared

in 1865, before "The Gospels Annotated," and after the volume entitled

"The Principle of Art and its Social Destiny."

The publications of Proudhon, in 1863, were: 1. "Literary Majorats: An

Examination of a Bill having for its object the Creation of a Perpetual

Monopoly for the Benefit of Authors, Inventors, and Artists;" 2.

"The Federative Principle and the Necessity of Re-establishing the

Revolutionary party;" 3. "The Sworn Democrats and the Refractories;" 4.

"Whether the Treaties of 1815 have ceased to exist? Acts of the Future

Congress."

The disease which was destined to kill him grew worse and worse; but

Proudhon labored constantly!... A series of articles, published in 1864

in "Le Messager de Paris," have been collected in a pamphlet under the

title of "New Observations on Italian Unity." He hoped to publish

during the same year his work on "The Political Capacity of the Working

Classes," but was unable to write the last chapter.... He grew weaker

continually. His doctor prescribed rest. In the month of August he went

to Franche-Comte, where he spent a month. Having returned to Paris,

he resumed his labor with difficulty.... From the month of December

onwards, the heart disease made rapid progress; the oppression became

insupportable, his legs were swollen, and he could not sleep....

On the 19th of January, 1865, he died, towards two o'clock in the

morning, in the arms of his wife, his sister-in-law, and the friend who

writes these lines....

The publication of his correspondence, to which his daughter Catherine

is faithfully devoted, will tend, no doubt, to increase his reputation

as a thinker, as a writer, and as an honest man.

J. A. LANGLOIS.

PREFACE.

The following letter served as a preface to the first edition of this

memoir:--

"To the Members of the Academy of Besancon

"PARIS, June 30, 1840.

"GENTLEMEN,--In the course of your debate of the 9th of May, 1833,

in regard to the triennial pension established by Madame Suard, you

expressed the following wish:--

"'The Academy requests the titulary to present it annually, during the

first fortnight in July, with a succinct and logical statement of the

various studies which he has pursued during the year which has just

expired.'

"I now propose, gentlemen, to discharge this duty.

"When I solicited your votes, I boldly avowed my intention to bend my

efforts to the discovery of some means of AMELIORATING THE PHYSICAL,

MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE MERE NUMEROUS AND POORER

CLASSES. This idea, foreign as it may have seemed to the object of my

candidacy, you received favorably; and, by the precious distinction with

which it has been your pleasure to honor me, you changed this formal

offer into an inviolable and sacred obligation. Thenceforth I understood

with how worthy and honorable a society I had to deal: my regard for

its enlightenment, my recognition of its benefits, my enthusiasm for its

glory, were unbounded.

"Convinced at once that, in order to break loose from the beaten paths

of opinions and systems, it was necessary to proceed in my study of man

and society by scientific methods, and in a rigorous manner, I devoted

one year to philology and grammar; linguistics, or the natural history

of speech, being, of all the sciences, that which was best suited to

the character of my mind, seemed to bear the closest relation to the

researches which I was about to commence. A treatise, written at

this period upon one of the most interesting questions of comparative

grammar,[2] if it did not reveal the astonishing success, at least bore

witness to the thoroughness, of my labors.

"Since that time, metaphysics and moral science have been my only

studies; my perception of the fact that these sciences, though badly

defined as to their object and not confined to their sphere, are, like

the natural sciences, susceptible of demonstration and certainty, has

already rewarded my efforts.

"But, gentlemen, of all the masters whom I have followed, to none do

I owe so much as to you. Your co-operation, your programmes, your

instructions, in agreement with my secret wishes and most cherished

hopes, have at no time failed to enlighten me and to point out my road;

this memoir on property is the child of your thought.

"In 1838, the Academy of Besancon proposed the following question:

TO WHAT CAUSES MUST WE ATTRIBUTE THE CONTINUALLY INCREASING NUMBER OF

SUICIDES, AND WHAT ARE THE PROPER MEANS FOR ARRESTING THE EFFECTS OF

THIS MORAL CONTAGION?

"Thereby it asked, in less general terms, what was the cause of the

social evil, and what was its remedy? You admitted that yourselves,

gentlemen when your committee reported that the competitors had

enumerated with exactness the immediate and particular causes of

suicide, as well as the means of preventing each of them; but that

from this enumeration, chronicled with more or less skill, no positive

information had been gained, either as to the primary cause of the evil,

or as to its remedy.

"In 1839, your programme, always original and varied in its academical

expression, became more exact. The investigations of 1838 had pointed

out, as the causes or rather as the symptoms of the social malady,

the neglect of the principles of religion and morality, the desire for

wealth, the passion for enjoyment, and political disturbances. All these

data were embodied by you in a single proposition: _THE UTILITY OF THE

CELEBRATION OF SUNDAY AS REGARDS HYGIENE, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL AND

POLITICAL RELATION_.

"In a Christian tongue you asked, gentlemen, what was the true system

of society. A competitor [3] dared to maintain, and believed that he

had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals

is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of

conditions; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and

an impossibility: that equality alone can revive this ancient and

mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not meet with

your approbation, since, without denying the relation pointed out by

the competitor, you judged, and rightly gentlemen, that the principle of

equality of conditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author

were nothing more than hypotheses.

"Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental principle of equality you

presented for competition in the following terms: THE ECONOMICAL AND

MORAL CONSEQUENCES IN FRANCE UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, AND THOSE WHICH

SEEM LIKELY TO APPEAR IN FUTURE, OF THE LAW CONCERNING THE EQUAL

DIVISION OF HEREDITARY PROPERTY BETWEEN THE CHILDREN.

"Instead of confining one to common places without breadth or

significance, it seems to me that your question should be developed as

follows:--

"If the law has been able to render the right of heredity common to

all the children of one father, can it not render it equal for all his

grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

"If the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family, can

it not, by the right of heredity, cease to heed it in the race, in the

tribe, in the nation?

"Can equality, by the right of succession, be preserved between

citizens, as well as between cousins and brothers? In a word, can the

principle of succession become a principle of equality?

"To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question: What is the

principle of heredity? What are the foundations of inequality? What is

property?

"Such, gentlemen, is the object of the memoir that I offer you to day.

"If I have rightly grasped the object of your thought; if I succeed in

bringing to light a truth which is indisputable, but, from causes

which I am bold enough to claim to have explained, has always been

misunderstood; if by an infallible method of investigation, I establish

the dogma of equality of conditions; if I determine the principle

of civil law, the essence of justice, and the form of society; if I

annihilate property forever,--to you, gentlemen, will redound all the

glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it.

"My purpose in this work is the application of method to the problems of

philosophy; every other intention is foreign to and even abusive of it.

"I have spoken lightly of jurisprudence: I had the right; but I should

be unjust did I not distinguish between this pretended science and

the men who practise it. Devoted to studies both laborious and severe,

entitled in all respects to the esteem of their fellow-citizens by their

knowledge and eloquence our legists deserve but one reproach, that of an

excessive deference to arbitrary laws.

"I have been pitiless in my criticism of the economists: for them

I confess that, in general, I have no liking. The arrogance and

the emptiness of their writings, their impertinent pride and their

unwarranted blunders, have disgusted me. Whoever, knowing them, pardons

them, may read them.

"I have severely blamed the learned Christian Church: it was my duty.

This blame results from the facts which I call attention to: why has

the Church decreed concerning things which it does not understand? The

Church has erred in dogma and in morals; physics and mathematics

testify against her. It may be wrong for me to say it, but surely it

is unfortunate for Christianity that it is true. To restore religion,

gentlemen, it is necessary to condemn the Church.

"Perhaps you will regret, gentlemen, that, in giving all my attention to

method and evidence, I have too much neglected form and style: in vain

should I have tried to do better. Literary hope and faith I have none.

The nineteenth century is, in my eyes, a genesic era, in which new

principles are elaborated, but in which nothing that is written shall

endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of

talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like

ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what

use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth?

Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us

to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us

is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this sad

success!

"Why should I not confess it, gentlemen? I have aspired to your

suffrages and sought the title of your pensioner, hating all which

exists and full of projects for its destruction; I shall finish this

investigation in a spirit of calm and philosophical resignation. I have

derived more peace from the knowledge of the truth, than anger from the

feeling of oppression; and the most precious fruit that I could wish to

gather from this memoir would be the inspiration of my readers with that

tranquillity of soul which arises from the clear perception of evil and

its cause, and which is much more powerful than passion and enthusiasm.

My hatred of privilege and human authority was unbounded; perhaps at

times I have been guilty, in my indignation, of confounding persons and

things; at present I can only despise and complain; to cease to hate I

only needed to know.

"It is for you now, gentlemen, whose mission and character are the

proclamation of the truth, it is for you to instruct the people, and to

tell them for what they ought to hope and what they ought to fear. The

people, incapable as yet of sound judgment as to what is best for them,

applaud indiscriminately the most opposite ideas, provided that in them

they get a taste of flattery: to them the laws of thought are like the

confines of the possible; to-day they can no more distinguish between a

savant and a sophist, than formerly they could tell a physician from

a sorcerer. 'Inconsiderately accepting, gathering together, and

accumulating everything that is new, regarding all reports as true and

indubitable, at the breath or ring of novelty they assemble like bees at

the sound of a basin.' [4]

"May you, gentlemen, desire equality as I myself desire it; may you,

for the eternal happiness of our country, become its propagators and its

heralds; may I be the last of your pensioners! Of all the wishes that

I can frame, that, gentlemen, is the most worthy of you and the most

honorable for me.

"I am, with the profoundest respect and the most earnest gratitude,

"Your pensioner,

"P. J. PROUDHON."

Two months after the receipt of this letter, the Academy, in its debate

of August 24th, replied to the address of its pensioner by a note, the

text of which I give below:--

"A member calls the attention of the Academy to a pamphlet, published

last June by the titulary of the Suard pension, entitled, "What is

property?" and dedicated by the author to the Academy. He is of the

opinion that the society owes it to justice, to example, and to its

own dignity, to publicly disavow all responsibility for the anti-social

doctrines contained in this publication. In consequence he demands:

"1. That the Academy disavow and condemn, in the most formal manner,

the work of the Suard pensioner, as having been published without its

assent, and as attributing to it opinions diametrically opposed to the

principles of each of its members;

"2. That the pensioner be charged, in case he should publish a second

edition of his book, to omit the dedication;

"3. That this judgment of the Academy be placed upon the records.

"These three propositions, put to vote, are adopted."

After this ludicrous decree, which its authors thought to render

powerful by giving it the form of a contradiction, I can only beg the

reader not to measure the intelligence of my compatriots by that of our

Academy.

While my patrons in the social and political sciences were fulminating

anathemas against my brochure, a man, who was a stranger to

Franche-Comte, who did not know me, who might even have regarded himself

as personally attacked by the too sharp judgment which I had passed upon

the economists, a publicist as learned as he was modest, loved by the

people whose sorrows he felt, honored by the power which he sought to

enlighten without flattering or disgracing it, M. Blanqui--member of the

Institute, professor of political economy, defender of property--took up

my defence before his associates and before the ministry, and saved me

from the blows of a justice which is always blind, because it is always

ignorant.

It seems to me that the reader will peruse with pleasure the letter

which M. Blanqui did me the honor to write to me upon the publication

of my second memoir, a letter as honorable to its author as it is

flattering to him to whom it is addressed.

"PARIS, May 1, 1841.

"MONSIEUR,--I hasten to thank you for forwarding to me your second

memoir upon property. I have read it with all the interest that an

acquaintance with the first would naturally inspire. I am very glad that

you have modified somewhat the rudeness of form which gave to a work

of such gravity the manner and appearance of a pamphlet; for you quite

frightened me, sir, and your talent was needed to reassure me in regard

to your intentions. One does not expend so much real knowledge with

the purpose of inflaming his country. This proposition, now coming into

notice--PROPERTY IS ROBBERY!--was of a nature to repel from your book

even those serious minds who do not judge by appearances, had you

persisted in maintaining it in its rude simplicity. But if you have

softened the form, you are none the less faithful to the ground-work

of your doctrines; and although you have done me the honor to give me a

share in this perilous teaching, I cannot accept a partnership which,

as far as talent goes, would surely be a credit to me, but which would

compromise me in all other respects.

"I agree with you in one thing only; namely, that all kinds of property

get too frequently abused in this world. But I do not reason from the

abuse to the abolition,--an heroic remedy too much like death, which

cures all evils. I will go farther: I will confess that, of all abuses,

the most hateful to me are those of property; but once more, there is

a remedy for this evil without violating it, all the more without

destroying it. If the present laws allow abuse, we can reconstruct them.

Our civil code is not the Koran; it is not wrong to examine it. Change,

then, the laws which govern the use of property, but be sparing of

anathemas; for, logically, where is the honest man whose hands are

entirely clean? Do you think that one can be a robber without knowing

it, without wishing it, without suspecting it? Do you not admit that

society in its present state, like every man, has in its constitution

all kinds of virtues and vices inherited from our ancestors? Is

property, then, in your eyes a thing so simple and so abstract that you

can re-knead and equalize it, if I may so speak, in your metaphysical

mill? One who has said as many excellent and practical things as occur

in these two beautiful and paradoxical improvisations of yours cannot

be a pure and unwavering utopist. You are too well acquainted with the

economical and academical phraseology to play with the hard words

of revolutions. I believe, then, that you have handled property as

Rousseau, eighty years ago, handled letters, with a magnificent and

poetical display of wit and knowledge. Such, at least, is my opinion.

"That is what I said to the Institute at the time when I presented my

report upon your book. I knew that they wished to proceed against you in

the courts; you perhaps do not know by how narrow a chance I succeeded

in preventing them. [5] What chagrin I should always have felt, if

the king's counsel, that is to say, the intellectual executioner, had

followed in my very tracks to attack your book and annoy your person! I

actually passed two terrible nights, and I succeeded in restraining

the secular arm only by showing that your book was an academical

dissertation, and not the manifesto of an incendiary. Your style is too

lofty ever to be of service to the madmen who in discussing the gravest

questions of our social order, use paving-stones as their weapons. But

see to it, sir, that ere long they do not come, in spite of you, to

seek for ammunition in this formidable arsenal, and that your

vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the

market-place, who might discuss the question in the presence of a

starving audience: we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration.

"I feel as deeply as you, sir, the abuses which you point out; but I

have so great an affection for order,--not that common and strait-laced

order with which the police are satisfied, but the majestic and imposing

order of human societies,--that I sometimes find myself embarrassed

in attacking certain abuses. I like to rebuild with one hand when I am

compelled to destroy with the other. In pruning an old tree, we guard

against destruction of the buds and fruit. You know that as well as any

one. You are a wise and learned man; you have a thoughtful mind. The

terms by which you characterize the fanatics of our day are strong

enough to reassure the most suspicious imaginations as to your

intentions; but you conclude in favor of the abolition of property! You

wish to abolish the most powerful motor of the human mind; you attack

the paternal sentiment in its sweetest illusions; with one word you

arrest the formation of capital, and we build henceforth upon the sand

instead of on a rock. That I cannot agree to; and for that reason I

have criticised your book, so full of beautiful pages, so brilliant with

knowledge and fervor!

"I wish, sir, that my impaired health would permit me to examine with

you, page by page, the memoir which you have done me the honor to

address to me publicly and personally; I think I could offer some

important criticisms. For the moment, I must content myself with

thanking you for the kind words in which you have seen fit to speak of

me. We each possess the merit of sincerity; I desire also the merit

of prudence. You know how deep-seated is the disease under which the

working-people are suffering; I know how many noble hearts beat under

those rude garments, and I feel an irresistible and fraternal sympathy

with the thousands of brave people who rise early in the morning to

labor, to pay their taxes, and to make our country strong. I try to

serve and enlighten them, whereas some endeavor to mislead them. You

have not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent

manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more

guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose

first precept is calmness and impartiality.

"Farewell, sir! No man's esteem for another can exceed mine for you.

"BLANQUI."

I should certainly take some exceptions to this noble and eloquent

letter; but I confess that I am more inclined to realize the prediction

with which it terminates than to augment needlessly the number of

my antagonists. So much controversy fatigues and wearies me. The

intelligence expended in the warfare of words is like that employed in

battle: it is intelligence wasted. M. Blanqui acknowledges that property

is abused in many harmful ways; I call PROPERTY the sum these abuses

exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need

knocking off; but, the operation performed, M. Blanqui maintains

that the figure will still be a polygon (an hypothesis admitted in

mathematics, although not proven), while I consider that this figure

will be a circle. Honest people can at least understand one another.

For the rest, I allow that, in the present state of the question, the

mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of the abolition

of property. To gain the victory for one's cause, it does not suffice

simply to overthrow a principle generally recognized, which has the

indisputable merit of systematically recapitulating our political

theories; it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle, and

to formulate the system which must proceed from it. Still further, it

is necessary to show the method by which the new system will satisfy

all the moral and political needs which induced the establishment of

the first. On the following conditions, then, of subsequent evidence,

depends the correctness of my preceding arguments:--

The discovery of a system of absolute equality in which all existing

institutions, save property, or the sum of the abuses of property,

not only may find a place, but may themselves serve as instruments

of equality: individual liberty, the division of power, the public

ministry, the jury system, administrative and judicial organization, the

unity and completeness of instruction, marriage, the family, heredity

in direct and collateral succession, the right of sale and exchange, the

right to make a will, and even birthright,--a system which, better than

property, guarantees the formation of capital and keeps up the courage

of all; which, from a superior point of view, explains, corrects, and

completes the theories of association hitherto proposed, from Plato

and Pythagoras to Babeuf, Saint Simon, and Fourier; a system, finally,

which, serving as a means of transition, is immediately applicable.

A work so vast requires, I am aware, the united efforts of twenty

Montesquieus; nevertheless, if it is not given to a single man to

finish, a single one can commence, the enterprise. The road that he

shall traverse will suffice to show the end and assure the result.

WHAT IS PROPERTY? OR,

AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT.

FIRST MEMOIR.

_Adversus hostem aeterna auctertas esto._

Against the enemy, revendication is eternal. LAW OF THE

TWELVE TABLES.

CHAPTER I. METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION.

If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I

should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood

at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power

to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of

life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to

this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT

IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second

proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our

institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the

conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right.

I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in

my right.

Such an author teaches that property is a civil right, born of

occupation and sanctioned by law; another maintains that it is a natural

right, originating in labor,--and both of these doctrines, totally

opposed as they may seem, are encouraged and applauded. I contend that

neither labor, nor occupation, nor law, can create property; that it is

an effect without a cause: am I censurable?

But murmurs arise!

PROPERTY IS ROBBERY! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of

revolutions!

Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of

sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose

development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of

our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you

blasphemous--PROPERTY IS ROBBERY--would, if our prejudices allowed us

to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the

coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way!... Alas!

philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill

itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our

education be finished?

PROPERTY IS ROBBERY!... What a revolution in human ideas! PROPRIETOR and

ROBBER have been at all times expressions as contradictory as the beings

whom they designate are hostile; all languages have perpetuated this

opposition. On what authority, then, do you venture to attack universal

consent, and give the lie to the human race? Who are you, that you

should question the judgment of the nations and the ages?

Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I

live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and

to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. [6] My mission is

written in these words of the law: SPEAK WITHOUT HATRED AND WITHOUT

FEAR; TELL THAT WHICH THOU KNOWEST! The work of our race is to build the

temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth

reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to

the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one

contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished,

disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two

infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should

inquire about him?

Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my

arguments. It is in accordance with universal consent that I undertake

to correct universal error; from the OPINION of the human race I appeal

to its FAITH. Have the courage to follow me; and, if your will is

untrammelled, if your conscience is free, if your mind can unite two

propositions and deduce a third therefrom, my ideas will inevitably

become yours. In beginning by giving you my last word, it was my purpose

to warn you, not to defy you; for I am certain that, if you read me, you

will be compelled to assent. The things of which I am to speak are so

simple and clear that you will be astonished at not having perceived

them before, and you will say: "I have neglected to think." Others offer

you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature's secrets from her, and

unfolding before you her sublime messages; you will find here only a

series of experiments upon JUSTICE and RIGHT a sort of verification of

the weights and measures of your conscience. The operations shall be

conducted under your very eyes; and you shall weigh the result.

Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the

abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice,

nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I

leave the business of governing the world.

One day I asked myself: Why is there so much sorrow and misery in

society? Must man always be wretched? And not satisfied with the

explanations given by the reformers,--these attributing the general

distress to governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators

and emeutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption,--and

weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I

sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of

science; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political

economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in

which so much reading had been useless! I have made every effort to

obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections,

continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and

weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous

logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts

which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have

leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never

understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred:

JUSTICE, EQUITY, LIBERTY; that concerning each of these principles our

ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was

the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the

calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

My mind was frightened by this strange result: I doubted my reason.

What! said I, that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor insight

penetrated, you have discovered! Wretch, mistake not the visions of

your diseased brain for the truths of science! Do you not know (great

philosophers have said so) that in points of practical morality

universal error is a contradiction?

I resolved then to test my arguments; and in entering upon this new

labor I sought an answer to the following questions: Is it possible

that humanity can have been so long and so universally mistaken in the

application of moral principles? How and why could it be mistaken? How

can its error, being universal, be capable of correction?

These questions, on the solution of which depended the certainty of my

conclusions, offered no lengthy resistance to analysis. It will be seen,

in chapter V. of this work, that in morals, as in all other branches of

knowledge, the gravest errors are the dogmas of science; that, even in

works of justice, to be mistaken is a privilege which ennobles man; and

that whatever philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small.

To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its

appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea,--an idea

which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another

if I fail to announce it to-day,--I can claim no merit save that of

priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the

dawn?

Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical

with equality of rights; that PROPERTY and ROBBERY are synonymous terms;

that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of

superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their

hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made

to understand it.

Before entering directly upon the question before me, I must say a word

of the road that I shall traverse. When Pascal approached a geometrical

problem, he invented a method of solution; to solve a problem in

philosophy a method is equally necessary. Well, by how much do the

problems of which philosophy treats surpass in the gravity of their

results those discussed by geometry! How much more imperatively, then,

do they demand for their solution a profound and rigorous analysis!

It is a fact placed for ever beyond doubt, say the modern psychologists,

that every perception received by the mind is determined by certain

general laws which govern the mind; is moulded, so to speak, in certain

types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its

original condition. Hence, say they, if the mind has no innate IDEAS,

it has at least innate FORMS. Thus, for example, every phenomenon is of

necessity conceived by us as happening in TIME and SPACE,--that compels

us to infer a CAUSE of its occurrence; every thing which exists implies

the ideas of SUBSTANCE, MODE, RELATION, NUMBER, &C.; in a word, we form

no idea which is not related to some one of the general principles of

reason, independent of which nothing exists.

These axioms of the understanding, add the psychologists, these

fundamental types, by which all our judgments and ideas are inevitably

shaped, and which our sensations serve only to illuminate, are known

in the schools as CATEGORIES. Their primordial existence in the mind is

to-day demonstrated; they need only to be systematized and catalogued.

Aristotle recognized ten; Kant increased the number to fifteen; M.

Cousin has reduced it to three, to two, to one; and the indisputable

glory of this professor will be due to the fact that, if he has not

discovered the true theory of categories, he has, at least, seen more

clearly than any one else the vast importance of this question,--the

greatest and perhaps the only one with which metaphysics has to deal.

I confess that I disbelieve in the innateness, not only of IDEAS, but

also of FORMS or LAWS of our understanding; and I hold the metaphysics

of Reid and Kant to be still farther removed from the truth than that of

Aristotle. However, as I do not wish to enter here into a discussion of

the mind, a task which would demand much labor and be of no interest to

the public, I shall admit the hypothesis that our most general and

most necessary ideas--such as time, space, substance, and cause--exist

originally in the mind; or, at least, are derived immediately from its

constitution.

But it is a psychological fact none the less true, and one to which the

philosophers have paid too little attention, that habit, like a second

nature, has the power of fixing in the mind new categorical forms

derived from the appearances which impress us, and by them usually

stripped of objective reality, but whose influence over our judgments

is no less predetermining than that of the original categories. Hence

we reason by the ETERNAL and ABSOLUTE laws of our mind, and at the same

time by the secondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to

us by imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false

prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a multitude

of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is so strong that

often, even when we are fighting against a principle which our mind

thinks false, which is repugnant to our reason, and which our conscience

disapproves, we defend it without knowing it, we reason in accordance

with it, and we obey it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle,

our mind revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within

us new ideas, brings to view an external principle which delivers us

from the phantom by which our imagination is possessed.

Thus, we know to-day that, by the laws of a universal magnetism whose

cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle intervening) tend to

unite by an accelerated impelling force which we call GRAVITATION. It is

gravitation which causes unsupported bodies to fall to the ground, which

gives them weight, and which fastens us to the earth on which we live.

Ignorance of this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the

ancients from believing in the antipodes. "Can you not see," said St.

Augustine after Lactantius, "that, if there were men under our feet,

their heads would point downward, and that they would fall into the

sky?" The bishop of Hippo, who thought the earth flat because it

appeared so to the eye, supposed in consequence that, if we should

connect by straight lines the zenith with the nadir in different places,

these lines would be parallel with each other; and in the direction

of these lines he traced every movement from above to below. Thence he

naturally concluded that the stars were rolling torches set in the vault

of the sky; that, if left to themselves, they would fall to the earth in

a shower of fire; that the earth was one vast plain, forming the lower

portion of the world, &c. If he had been asked by what the world itself

was sustained, he would have answered that he did not know, but that

to God nothing is impossible. Such were the ideas of St. Augustine in

regard to space and movement, ideas fixed within him by a prejudice

derived from an appearance, and which had become with him a general and

categorical rule of judgment. Of the reason why bodies fall his mind

knew nothing; he could only say that a body falls because it falls.

With us the idea of a fall is more complex: to the general ideas of

space and movement which it implies, we add that of attraction or

direction towards a centre, which gives us the higher idea of cause. But

if physics has fully corrected our judgment in this respect, we still

make use of the prejudice of St. Augustine; and when we say that a thing

has FALLEN, we do not mean simply and in general that there has been

an effect of gravitation, but specially and in particular that it is

towards the earth, and FROM ABOVE TO BELOW, that this movement has taken

place. Our mind is enlightened in vain; the imagination prevails, and

our language remains forever incorrigible. To DESCEND FROM HEAVEN is as

incorrect an expression as to MOUNT TO HEAVEN; and yet this expression

will live as long as men use language.

All these phrases--FROM ABOVE TO BELOW; TO DESCEND FROM HEAVEN; TO FALL

FROM THE CLOUDS, &C.--are henceforth harmless, because we know how to

rectify them in practice; but let us deign to consider for a moment how

much they have retarded the progress of science. If, indeed, it be a

matter of little importance to statistics, mechanics, hydrodynamics, and

ballistics, that the true cause of the fall of bodies should be known,

and that our ideas of the general movements in space should be exact,

it is quite otherwise when we undertake to explain the system of the

universe, the cause of tides, the shape of the earth, and its position

in the heavens: to understand these things we must leave the circle

of appearances. In all ages there have been ingenious mechanicians,

excellent architects, skilful artillerymen: any error, into which it was

possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and

gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the

solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected

by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena,

which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the

earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle

between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily

practice, and the unprecedented opinions which the testimony of the eyes

seemed to contradict.

Thus, on the one hand, the falsest judgments, whether based on isolated

facts or only on appearances, always embrace some truths whose sphere,

whether large or small, affords room for a certain number of inferences,

beyond which we fall into absurdity. The ideas of St. Augustine, for

example, contained the following truths: that bodies fall towards the

earth, that they fall in a straight line, that either the sun or the

earth moves, that either the sky or the earth turns, &c. These general

facts always have been true; our science has added nothing to them. But,

on the other hand, it being necessary to account for every thing, we are

obliged to seek for principles more and more comprehensive: that is why

we have had to abandon successively, first the opinion that the world

was flat, then the theory which regards it as the stationary centre of

the universe, &c.

If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find

ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same

influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of

this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good

or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the

obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and

killing us.

Whatever theory we embrace in regard to the shape of the earth and the

cause of its weight, the physics of the globe does not suffer; and,

as for us, our social economy can derive therefrom neither profit nor

damage. But it is in us and through us that the laws of our moral nature

work; now, these laws cannot be executed without our deliberate aid,

and, consequently, unless we know them. If, then, our science of moral

laws is false, it is evident that, while desiring our own good, we are

accomplishing our own evil; if it is only incomplete, it may suffice for

a time for our social progress, but in the long run it will lead us

into a wrong road, and will finally precipitate us into an abyss of

calamities.

Then it is that we need to exercise our highest judgments; and, be it

said to our glory, they are never found wanting: but then also commences

a furious struggle between old prejudices and new ideas. Days of

conflagration and anguish! We are told of the time when, with the same

beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why

complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to

admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the

principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods,

the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the

cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his

rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay

and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast

depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants.

So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to

change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by

the faithful observance of the ages.

_Nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est_: Distrust all innovations, wrote

Titus Livius. Undoubtedly it would be better were man not compelled to

change: but what! because he is born ignorant, because he exists only

on condition of gradual self-instruction, must he abjure the light,

abdicate his reason, and abandon himself to fortune? Perfect health is

better than convalescence: should the sick man, therefore, refuse to

be cured? Reform, reform! cried, ages since, John the Baptist and Jesus

Christ. Reform, reform! cried our fathers, fifty years ago; and for a

long time to come we shall shout, Reform, reform!

Seeing the misery of my age, I said to myself: Among the principles that

support society, there is one which it does not understand, which its

ignorance has vitiated, and which causes all the evil that exists. This

principle is the most ancient of all; for it is a characteristic of

revolutions to tear down the most modern principles, and to respect

those of long-standing. Now the evil by which we suffer is anterior to

all revolutions. This principle, impaired by our ignorance, is honored

and cherished; for if it were not cherished it would harm nobody, it

would be without influence.

But this principle, right in its purpose, but misunderstood: this

principle, as old as humanity, what is it? Can it be religion?

All men believe in God: this dogma belongs at once to their conscience

and their mind. To humanity God is a fact as primitive, an idea as

inevitable, a principle as necessary as are the categorical ideas of

cause, substance, time, and space to our understanding. God is proven to

us by the conscience prior to any inference of the mind; just as the

sun is proven to us by the testimony of the senses prior to all the

arguments of physics. We discover phenomena and laws by observation and

experience; only this deeper sense reveals to us existence. Humanity

believes that God is; but, in believing in God, what does it believe? In

a word, what is God?

The nature of this notion of Divinity,--this primitive, universal

notion, born in the race,--the human mind has not yet fathomed. At each

step that we take in our investigation of Nature and of causes, the idea

of God is extended and exalted; the farther science advances, the more

God seems to grow and broaden. Anthropomorphism and idolatry constituted

of necessity the faith of the mind in its youth, the theology of infancy

and poesy. A harmless error, if they had not endeavored to make it a

rule of conduct, and if they had been wise enough to respect the

liberty of thought. But having made God in his own image, man wished

to appropriate him still farther; not satisfied with disfiguring the

Almighty, he treated him as his patrimony, his goods, his possessions.

God, pictured in monstrous forms, became throughout the world the

property of man and of the State. Such was the origin of the corruption

of morals by religion, and the source of pious feuds and holy wars.

Thank Heaven! we have learned to allow every one his own beliefs; we

seek for moral laws outside the pale of religion. Instead of legislating

as to the nature and attributes of God, the dogmas of theology, and

the destiny of our souls, we wisely wait for science to tell us what to

reject and what to accept. God, soul, religion,--eternal objects of

our unwearied thought and our most fatal aberrations, terrible

problems whose solution, for ever attempted, for ever remains

unaccomplished,--concerning all these questions we may still be

mistaken, but at least our error is harmless. With liberty in religion,

and the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, the

influence of religious ideas upon the progress of society is purely

negative; no law, no political or civil institution being founded on

religion. Neglect of duties imposed by religion may increase the general

corruption, but it is not the primary cause; it is only an auxiliary or

result. It is universally admitted, and especially in the matter

which now engages our attention, that the cause of the inequality

of conditions among men--of pauperism, of universal misery, and of

governmental embarrassments--can no longer be traced to religion: we

must go farther back, and dig still deeper.

But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment?

There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and

law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why?

"Man," say the theologians, "transgressed in the beginning; our race

is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has

fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history,

you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the

permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his

disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ

emollients; there is no remedy."

Nor is this argument peculiar to the theologians; we find it

expressed in equivalent language in the philosophical writings of the

materialists, believers in infinite perfectibility. Destutt de Tracy

teaches formally that poverty, crime, and war are the inevitable

conditions of our social state; necessary evils, against which it would

be folly to revolt. So, call it NECESSITY OF EVIL or ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY,

it is at bottom the same philosophy.

"The first man transgressed." If the votaries of the Bible interpreted

it faithfully, they would say: MAN ORIGINALLY TRANSGRESSED, that is,

made a mistake; for TO TRANSGRESS, TO FAIL, TO MAKE A MISTAKE, all mean

the same thing.

"The consequences of Adam's transgression are inherited by the race;

the first is ignorance." Truly, the race, like the individual, is born

ignorant; but, in regard to a multitude of questions, even in the moral

and political spheres, this ignorance of the race has been dispelled:

who says that it will not depart altogether? Mankind makes continual

progress toward truth, and light ever triumphs over darkness. Our

disease is not, then, absolutely incurable, and the theory of the

theologians is worse than inadequate; it is ridiculous, since it is

reducible to this tautology: "Man errs, because he errs." While the true

statement is this: "Man errs, because he learns."

Now, if man arrives at a knowledge of all that he needs to know, it is

reasonable to believe that, ceasing to err, he will cease to suffer.

But if we question the doctors as to this law, said to be engraved upon

the heart of man, we shall immediately see that they dispute about a

matter of which they know nothing; that, concerning the most important

questions, there are almost as many opinions as authors; that we find

no two agreeing as to the best form of government, the principle of

authority, and the nature of right; that all sail hap-hazard upon a

shoreless and bottomless sea, abandoned to the guidance of their private

opinions which they modestly take to be right reason. And, in view

of this medley of contradictory opinions, we say: "The object of our

investigations is the law, the determination of the social principle.

Now, the politicians, that is, the social scientists, do not understand

each other; then the error lies in themselves; and, as every error has

a reality for its object, we must look in their books to find the truth

which they have unconsciously deposited there."

Now, of what do the lawyers and the publicists treat? Of JUSTICE,

EQUITY, LIBERTY, NATURAL LAW, CIVIL LAWS, &c. But what is justice?

What is its principle, its character, its formula? To this question our

doctors evidently have no reply; for otherwise their science, starting

with a principle clear and well defined, would quit the region of

probabilities, and all disputes would end.

What is justice? The theologians answer: "All justice comes from God."

That is true; but we know no more than before.

The philosophers ought to be better informed: they have argued so much

about justice and injustice! Unhappily, an examination proves that their

knowledge amounts to nothing, and that with them--as with the savages

whose every prayer to the sun is simply _O! O!_--it is a cry of

admiration, love, and enthusiasm; but who does not know that the sun

attaches little meaning to the interjection O! That is exactly our

position toward the philosophers in regard to justice. Justice, they

say, is a DAUGHTER OF HEAVEN; A LIGHT WHICH ILLUMINES EVERY MAN THAT

COMES INTO THE WORLD; THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PREROGATIVE OF OUR NATURE;

THAT WHICH DISTINGUISHES US FROM THE BEASTS AND LIKENS US TO GOD--and

a thousand other similar things. What, I ask, does this pious litany

amount to? To the prayer of the savages: O!

All the most reasonable teachings of human wisdom concerning justice are

summed up in that famous adage: DO UNTO OTHERS THAT WHICH YOU WOULD THAT

OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU; DO NOT UNTO OTHERS THAT WHICH YOU WOULD

NOT THAT OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU. But this rule of moral practice is

unscientific: what have I a right to wish that others should do or not

do to me? It is of no use to tell me that my duty is equal to my right,

unless I am told at the same time what my right is.

Let us try to arrive at something more precise and positive.

Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole around

which the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of

all transactions. Nothing takes place between men save in the name of

RIGHT; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the

work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and

application of JUSTICE in all circumstances where men are liable to come

in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were

ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all

our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious,

our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social

chaos.

This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a

necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is

shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the

notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they

have undergone modifications: in a word, that there has been progress

in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming

testimony.

Eighteen Hundred years ago, the world, under the rule of the Caesars,

exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptuousness. The

people--intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued

orgies--had lost the very notion of right and duty: war and dissipation

by turns swept them away; usury and the labor of machines (that is of

slaves), by depriving them of the means of subsistence, hindered them

from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous

form, from this mass of corruption, and spread like a devouring leprosy

over the depopulated provinces. The wise foresaw the downfall of the

empire, but could devise no remedy. What could they think indeed? To

save this old society it would have been necessary to change the objects

of public esteem and veneration, and to abolish the rights affirmed by

a justice purely secular; they said: "Rome has conquered through her

politics and her gods; any change in theology and public opinion would

be folly and sacrilege. Rome, merciful toward conquered nations, though

binding them in chains, spared their lives; slaves are the most fertile

source of her wealth; freedom of the nations would be the negation of

her rights and the ruin of her finances. Rome, in fact, enveloped in the

pleasures and gorged with the spoils of the universe, is kept alive by

victory and government; her luxury and her pleasures are the price of

her conquests: she can neither abdicate nor dispossess herself."

Thus Rome had the facts and the law on her side. Her pretensions were

justified by universal custom and the law of nations. Her institutions

were based upon idolatry in religion, slavery in the State, and

epicurism in private life; to touch those was to shake society to its

foundations, and, to use our modern expression, to open the abyss of

revolutions. So the idea occurred to no one; and yet humanity was dying

in blood and luxury.

All at once a man appeared, calling himself The Word of God. It is not

known to this day who he was, whence he came, nor what suggested to

him his ideas. He went about proclaiming everywhere that the end of the

existing society was at hand, that the world was about to experience a

new birth; that the priests were vipers, the lawyers ignoramuses,

and the philosophers hypocrites and liars; that master and slave

were equals, that usury and every thing akin to it was robbery, that

proprietors and idlers would one day burn, while the poor and pure in

heart would find a haven of peace.

This man--The Word of God--was denounced and arrested as a public enemy

by the priests and the lawyers, who well understood how to induce the

people to demand his death. But this judicial murder, though it put the

finishing stroke to their crimes, did not destroy the doctrinal seeds

which The Word of God had sown. After his death, his original disciples

travelled about in all directions, preaching what they called the GOOD

NEWS, creating in their turn millions of missionaries; and, when their

task seemed to be accomplished, dying by the sword of Roman justice.

This persistent agitation, the war of the executioners and martyrs,

lasted nearly three centuries, ending in the conversion of the world.

Idolatry was destroyed, slavery abolished, dissolution made room for a

more austere morality, and the contempt for wealth was sometimes pushed

almost to privation.

Society was saved by the negation of its own principles, by a revolution

in its religion, and by violation of its most sacred rights. In this

revolution, the idea of justice spread to an extent that had not before

been dreamed of, never to return to its original limits. Heretofore

justice had existed only for the masters; [7] it then commenced to exist

for the slaves.

Nevertheless, the new religion at that time had borne by no means all

its fruits. There was a perceptible improvement of the public morals,

and a partial release from oppression; but, other than that, the SEEDS

SOWN BY THE SON OF MAN, having fallen into idolatrous hearts, had

produced nothing save innumerable discords and a quasi-poetical

mythology. Instead of developing into their practical consequences the

principles of morality and government taught by The Word of God, his

followers busied themselves in speculations as to his birth, his origin,

his person, and his actions; they discussed his parables, and from the

conflict of the most extravagant opinions upon unanswerable questions

and texts which no one understood, was born THEOLOGY,--which may be

defined as the SCIENCE OF THE INFINITELY ABSURD.

The truth of CHRISTIANITY did not survive the age of the apostles; the

GOSPEL, commented upon and symbolized by the Greeks and Latins, loaded

with pagan fables, became literally a mass of contradictions; and to

this day the reign of the INFALLIBLE CHURCH has been a long era of

darkness. It is said that the GATES OF HELL will not always prevail,

that THE WORD OF GOD will return, and that one day men will know truth

and justice; but that will be the death of Greek and Roman Catholicism,

just as in the light of science disappeared the caprices of opinion.

The monsters which the successors of the apostles were bent on

destroying, frightened for a moment, reappeared gradually, thanks to the

crazy fanaticism, and sometimes the deliberate connivance, of priests

and theologians. The history of the enfranchisement of the French

communes offers constantly the spectacle of the ideas of justice and

liberty spreading among the people, in spite of the combined efforts of

kings, nobles, and clergy. In the year 1789 of the Christian era, the

French nation, divided by caste, poor and oppressed, struggled in the

triple net of royal absolutism, the tyranny of nobles and parliaments,

and priestly intolerance. There was the right of the king and the right

of the priest, the right of the patrician and the right of the plebeian;

there were the privileges of birth, province, communes, corporations,

and trades; and, at the bottom of all, violence, immorality, and misery.

For some time they talked of reformation; those who apparently desired

it most favoring it only for their own profit, and the people who were

to be the gainers expecting little and saying nothing. For a long

time these poor people, either from distrust, incredulity, or despair,

hesitated to ask for their rights: it is said that the habit of serving

had taken the courage away from those old communes, which in the middle

ages were so bold.

Finally a book appeared, summing up the whole matter in these two

propositions: WHAT IS THE THIRD ESTATE?--NOTHING. WHAT OUGHT IT

TO BE?--EVERY THING. Some one added by way of comment: WHAT IS THE

KING?--THE SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE.

This was a sudden revelation: the veil was torn aside, a thick bandage

fell from all eyes. The people commenced to reason thus:--

If the king is our servant, he ought to report to us;

If he ought to report to us, he is subject to control;

If he can be controlled, he is responsible;

If he is responsible, he is punishable;

If he is punishable, he ought to be punished according to his merits;

If he ought to be punished according to his merits, he can be punished

with death.

Five years after the publication of the brochure of Sieyes, the third

estate was every thing; the king, the nobility, the clergy, were no

more. In 1793, the nation, without stopping at the constitutional

fiction of the inviolability of the sovereign, conducted Louis XVI. to

the scaffold; in 1830, it accompanied Charles X. to Cherbourg. In each

case, it may have erred, in fact, in its judgment of the offence; but,

in right, the logic which led to its action was irreproachable. The

people, in punishing their sovereign, did precisely that which the

government of July was so severely censured for failing to do when it

refused to execute Louis Bonaparte after the affair of Strasburg: they

struck the true culprit. It was an application of the common law, a

solemn decree of justice enforcing the penal laws. [8]

The spirit which gave rise to the movement of '89 was a spirit of

negation; that, of itself, proves that the order of things which was

substituted for the old system was not methodical or well-considered;

that, born of anger and hatred, it could not have the effect of a

science based on observation and study; that its foundations, in a word,

were not derived from a profound knowledge of the laws of Nature and

society. Thus the people found that the republic, among the so-called

new institutions, was acting on the very principles against which they

had fought, and was swayed by all the prejudices which they had intended

to destroy. We congratulate ourselves, with inconsiderate enthusiasm,

on the glorious French Revolution, the regeneration of 1789, the great

changes that have been effected, and the reversion of institutions: a

delusion, a delusion!

When our ideas on any subject, material, intellectual, or social,

undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call

that movement of the mind REVOLUTION. If the ideas are simply extended

or modified, there is only PROGRESS. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a

step in astronomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution. So,

in 1789, there was struggle and progress; revolution there was none. An

examination of the reforms which were attempted proves this.

The nation, so long a victim of monarchical selfishness, thought to

deliver itself for ever by declaring that it alone was sovereign. But

what was monarchy? The sovereignty of one man. What is democracy? The

sovereignty of the nation, or, rather, of the national majority. But it

is, in both cases, the sovereignty of man instead of the sovereignty of

the law, the sovereignty of the will instead of the sovereignty of the

reason; in one word, the passions instead of justice. Undoubtedly, when

a nation passes from the monarchical to the democratic state, there

is progress, because in multiplying the sovereigns we increase the

opportunities of the reason to substitute itself for the will; but in

reality there is no revolution in the government, since the principle

remains the same. Now, we have the proof to-day that, with the most

perfect democracy, we cannot be free. [9]

Nor is that all. The nation-king cannot exercise its sovereignty itself;

it is obliged to delegate it to agents: this is constantly reiterated by

those who seek to win its favor. Be these agents five, ten, one hundred,

or a thousand, of what consequence is the number; and what matters the

name? It is always the government of man, the rule of will and caprice.

I ask what this pretended revolution has revolutionized?

We know, too, how this sovereignty was exercised; first by the

Convention, then by the Directory, afterwards confiscated by the Consul.

As for the Emperor, the strong man so much adored and mourned by the

nation, he never wanted to be dependent on it; but, as if intending to

set its sovereignty at defiance, he dared to demand its suffrage: that

is, its abdication, the abdication of this inalienable sovereignty; and

he obtained it.

But what is sovereignty? It is, they say, the POWER TO MAKE LAW. [10]

Another absurdity, a relic of despotism. The nation had long seen kings

issuing their commands in this form: FOR SUCH IS OUR PLEASURE; it wished

to taste in its turn the pleasure of making laws. For fifty years it

has brought them forth by myriads; always, be it understood, through the

agency of representatives. The play is far from ended.

The definition of sovereignty was derived from the definition of the

law. The law, they said, is THE EXPRESSION OF THE WILL OF THE SOVEREIGN:

then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the

king; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the

people. Aside from the difference in the number of wills, the two

systems are exactly identical: both share the same error, namely, that

the law is the expression of a will; it ought to be the expression of

a fact. Moreover they followed good leaders: they took the citizen of

Geneva for their prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran.

Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the phrases of the new

legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and

privileges; its representatives issued the following declaration: ALL

MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE AND BEFORE THE LAW; an ambiguous and redundant

declaration. MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE: does that mean that they are equal

in size, beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political

and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said: ALL

MEN ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW.

But what is equality before the law? Neither the constitution of 1790,

nor that of '93, nor the granted charter, nor the accepted charter, have

defined it accurately. All imply an inequality in fortune and station

incompatible with even a shadow of equality in rights. In this respect

it may be said that all our constitutions have been faithful expressions

of the popular will: I am going, to prove it.

Formerly the people were excluded from civil and military offices; it

was considered a wonder when the following high-sounding article

was inserted in the Declaration of Rights: "All citizens are equally

eligible to office; free nations know no qualifications in their choice

of officers save virtues and talents."

They certainly ought to have admired so beautiful an idea: they admired

a piece of nonsense. Why! the sovereign people, legislators, and

reformers, see in public offices, to speak plainly, only opportunities

for pecuniary advancement. And, because it regards them as a source of

profit, it decrees the eligibility of citizens. For of what use would

this precaution be, if there were nothing to gain by it? No one would

think of ordaining that none but astronomers and geographers should be

pilots, nor of prohibiting stutterers from acting at the theatre and

the opera. The nation was still aping the kings: like them it wished

to award the lucrative positions to its friends and flatterers.

Unfortunately, and this last feature completes the resemblance, the

nation did not control the list of livings; that was in the hands of its

agents and representatives. They, on the other hand, took care not to

thwart the will of their gracious sovereign.

This edifying article of the Declaration of Rights, retained in the

charters of 1814 and 1830, implies several kinds of civil inequality;

that is, of inequality before the law: inequality of station, since the

public functions are sought only for the consideration and emoluments

which they bring; inequality of wealth, since, if it had been desired

to equalize fortunes, public service would have been regarded as a duty,

not as a reward; inequality of privilege, the law not stating what

it means by TALENTS and VIRTUES. Under the empire, virtue and talent

consisted simply in military bravery and devotion to the emperor; that

was shown when Napoleon created his nobility, and attempted to connect

it with the ancients. To-day, the man who pays taxes to the amount

of two hundred francs is virtuous; the talented man is the honest

pickpocket: such truths as these are accounted trivial.

The people finally legalized property. God forgive them, for they

knew not what they did! For fifty years they have suffered for their

miserable folly. But how came the people, whose voice, they tell us,

is the voice of God, and whose conscience is infallible,--how came the

people to err? How happens it that, when seeking liberty and equality,

they fell back into privilege and slavery? Always through copying the

ancient regime.

Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses

of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property

could not be seized even for debt,--while the plebeian, overwhelmed by

taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the

king's tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose

possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit

property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring

belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the

conditions of OWNERSHIP to be alike for all; they thought that every one

should ENJOY AND FREELY DISPOSE OF HIS POSSESSIONS HIS INCOME AND THE

FRUIT OF HIS LABOR AND INDUSTRY. The people did not invent property; but

as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles

and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised

by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of

property--statute-labor, mortmain, maitrise, and exclusion from public

office--have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been

modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress

in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution.

These, then, are the three fundamental principles of modern society,

established one after another by the movements of 1789 and 1830: 1.

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE HUMAN WILL; in short, DESPOTISM. 2. INEQUALITY OF

WEALTH AND RANK. 3. PROPERTY--above JUSTICE, always invoked as the

guardian angel of sovereigns, nobles, and proprietors; JUSTICE, the

general, primitive, categorical law of all society.

We must ascertain whether the ideas of DESPOTISM, CIVIL INEQUALITY

and PROPERTY, are in harmony with the primitive notion of JUSTICE, and

necessarily follow from it,--assuming various forms according to the

condition, position, and relation of persons; or whether they are not

rather the illegitimate result of a confusion of different things, a

fatal association of ideas. And since justice deals especially with the

questions of government, the condition of persons, and the possession

of things, we must ascertain under what conditions, judging by universal

opinion and the progress of the human mind, government is just, the

condition of citizens is just, and the possession of things is just;

then, striking out every thing which fails to meet these conditions,

the result will at once tell us what legitimate government is, what the

legitimate condition of citizens is, and what the legitimate possession

of things is; and finally, as the last result of the analysis, what

JUSTICE is.

Is the authority of man over man just?

Everybody answers, "No; the authority of man is only the authority of

the law, which ought to be justice and truth." The private will counts

for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth

and justice in order to make the law; and, second, in superintending the

execution of this law. I do not now inquire whether our constitutional

form of government satisfies these conditions; whether, for example, the

will of the ministry never influences the declaration and interpretation

of the law; or whether our deputies, in their debates, are more intent

on conquering by argument than by force of numbers: it is enough for me

that my definition of a good government is allowed to be correct. This

idea is exact. Yet we see that nothing seems more just to the Oriental

nations than the despotism of their sovereigns; that, with the ancients

and in the opinion of the philosophers themselves, slavery was just;

that in the middle ages the nobles, the priests, and the bishops felt

justified in holding slaves; that Louis XIV. thought that he was right

when he said, "The State! I am the State;" and that Napoleon deemed it

a crime for the State to oppose his will. The idea of justice, then,

applied to sovereignty and government, has not always been what it is

to-day; it has gone on developing and shaping itself by degrees, until

it has arrived at its present state. But has it reached its last phase?

I think not: only, as the last obstacle to be overcome arises from the

institution of property which we have kept intact, in order to finish

the reform in government and consummate the revolution, this very

institution we must attack.

Is political and civil inequality just?

Some say yes; others no. To the first I would reply that, when the

people abolished all privileges of birth and caste, they did it, in all

probability, because it was for their advantage; why then do they favor

the privileges of fortune more than those of rank and race? Because, say

they, political inequality is a result of property; and without property

society is impossible: thus the question just raised becomes a question

of property. To the second I content myself with this remark: If you

wish to enjoy political equality, abolish property; otherwise, why do

you complain?

Is property just?

Everybody answers without hesitation, "Yes, property is just." I say

everybody, for up to the present time no one who thoroughly understood

the meaning of his words has answered no. For it is no easy thing to

reply understandingly to such a question; only time and experience can

furnish an answer. Now, this answer is given; it is for us to understand

it. I undertake to prove it.

We are to proceed with the demonstration in the following order:--

I. We dispute not at all, we refute nobody, we deny nothing; we accept

as sound all the arguments alleged in favor of property, and confine

ourselves to a search for its principle, in order that we may then

ascertain whether this principle is faithfully expressed by property. In

fact, property being defensible on no ground save that of justice, the

idea, or at least the intention, of justice must of necessity underlie

all the arguments that have been made in defence of property; and, as on

the other hand the right of property is only exercised over those things

which can be appreciated by the senses, justice, secretly objectifying

itself, so to speak, must take the shape of an algebraic formula.

By this method of investigation, we soon see that every argument which

has been invented in behalf of property, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, always and

of necessity leads to equality; that is, to the negation of property.

The first part covers two chapters: one treating of occupation, the

foundation of our right; the other, of labor and talent, considered as

causes of property and social inequality.

The first of these chapters will prove that the right of occupation

OBSTRUCTS property; the second that the right of labor DESTROYS it.

II. Property, then, being of necessity conceived as existing only in

connection with equality, it remains to find out why, in spite of this

necessity of logic, equality does not exist. This new investigation also

covers two chapters: in the first, considering the fact of property in

itself, we inquire whether this fact is real, whether it exists, whether

it is possible; for it would imply a contradiction, were these two

opposite forms of society, equality and inequality, both possible. Then

we discover, singularly enough, that property may indeed manifest

itself accidentally; but that, as an institution and principle, it is

mathematically impossible. So that the axiom of the school--ab actu ad

posse valet consecutio: from the actual to the possible the inference is

good--is given the lie as far as property is concerned.

Finally, in the last chapter, calling psychology to our aid, and

probing man's nature to the bottom, we shall disclose the principle of

JUSTICE--its formula and character; we shall state with precision the

organic law of society; we shall explain the origin of property, the

causes of its establishment, its long life, and its approaching death;

we shall definitively establish its identity with robbery. And, after

having shown that these three prejudices--THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN, THE

INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, AND PROPERTY--are one and the same; that they

may be taken for each other, and are reciprocally convertible,--we

shall have no trouble in inferring therefrom, by the principle

of contradiction, the basis of government and right. There our

investigations will end, reserving the right to continue them in future

works.

The importance of the subject which engages our attention is recognized

by all minds.

"Property," says M. Hennequin, "is the creative and conservative

principle of civil society. Property is one of those basic institutions,

new theories concerning which cannot be presented too soon; for it must

not be forgotten, and the publicist and statesman must know, that on the

answer to the question whether property is the principle or the result

of social order, whether it is to be considered as a cause or an effect,

depends all morality, and, consequently, all the authority of human

institutions."

These words are a challenge to all men of hope and faith; but, although

the cause of equality is a noble one, no one has yet picked up the

gauntlet thrown down by the advocates of property; no one has been

courageous enough to enter upon the struggle. The spurious learning of

haughty jurisprudence, and the absurd aphorisms of a political economy

controlled by property have puzzled the most generous minds; it is a

sort of password among the most influential friends of liberty and

the interests of the people that EQUALITY IS A CHIMERA! So many false

theories and meaningless analogies influence minds otherwise keen,

but which are unconsciously controlled by popular prejudice. Equality

advances every day--fit aequalitas. Soldiers of liberty, shall we desert

our flag in the hour of triumph?

A defender of equality, I shall speak without bitterness and without

anger; with the independence becoming a philosopher, with the courage

and firmness of a free man. May I, in this momentous struggle, carry

into all hearts the light with which I am filled; and show, by the

success of my argument, that equality failed to conquer by the sword

only that it might conquer by the pen!