WHAT IS
PROPERTY?
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
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.
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.
