It is practical, for one can scarcely conceive anything more easily reduced to practice than this,—to allow men to labour, to exchange, to learn, to associate, to act and react on each other,—for, according to the laws of Providence, nothing can result from their intelligent spontaneity but order, harmony, progress, good, and better still; better ad infinitum.
Bravo, you will say; here we have the optimism of the Economists with a vengeance! These Economists are so much the slaves of their own systems that they shut their eyes to facts for fear of seeing them. In the face of all the poverty, all the injustice, all the oppressions which desolate humanity, they coolly deny the existence of evil. The smell of revolutionary gunpowder does not [p041] reach their blunted senses—the pavement of the barricades has no voice for them; and were society to crumble to pieces before their eyes, they would still keep repeating, “All is for the best in the best of worlds.”
No indeed,—we do not think that all is for the best; but I have faith in the wisdom of the laws of Providence, and for the same reason I have faith in Liberty.
The question is, Have we Liberty?
The question is, Do these laws act in their plenitude, or is their action not profoundly troubled by the countervailing action of human institutions?
Deny evil! deny suffering! Who can? We must forget that our subject is man. We must forget that we are ourselves men. The laws of Providence may be regarded as harmonious without their necessarily excluding evil. Enough that evil has its explanation and its mission, that it checks and limits itself, that it destroys itself by its own action, and that each suffering prevents a greater suffering by repressing the cause of suffering.
Society has for its element man, who is a free agent; and since man is free, he may choose,—since he may choose, he may be mistaken,—since he may be mistaken, he may suffer.
I go further. I say he must be mistaken and suffer—for he begins his journey in ignorance, and for ignorance there are endless and unknown roads, all of which, except one, lead to error.
Now, every Error engenders suffering; but either suffering reacts upon the man who errs, and then it brings Responsibility into play,—or, if it affects others who are free from error, it sets in motion the marvellous reactionary machinery of Solidarity.
The action of these laws, combined with the faculty which has been vouchsafed to us of connecting effects with their causes, must bring us back, by means of this very suffering, into the way of what is good and true.