M. PRUDHON.—CONTRADICTIONS ECONOMIQUES. [5]
If we wished to convert some inveterate democrat—some one of those eternal agitators of political and social revolutions—whose reasonings, though perhaps unconsciously to themselves, are all based on a far too sanguine view of the probable destinies of human society—there is no text-book we should more willingly select than this mad and apparently destructive work of M. Prudhon's. The bold development of those fundamental truths which have hitherto determined the framework of society, and, still more, the display it presents of the utter impotence of the wit of man, and all his speculative ingenuity, to reshape and reorganise the social world, must have, on every mind accustomed to reflection, a most sobering and conservative influence. What it was intended to teach is another matter; but to a mind well constituted it would convey this grave lesson—to recognise and submit to the inevitable; to be content to labour for partial remedies and limited results; to be satisfied with doing good, though it be something short of organic change; to think it sufficient ambition to be of that "salt of the earth" which preserves whatever is pure and excellent, without aspiring to be that consuming flame which is to fuse and recast the world.
Such was the reflection with which we closed the perusal of the Contradictions Economiques; and this reflection has led us to the present notice of a work which was not originally taken up with the intention of bringing it before our readers. We were referred to it as the work in which a man who has obtained unenviable notoriety had most systematically developed his ideas. Whether it is so, or not, we do not pledge ourselves to decide: we have had enough of Prudhonerie. But after a perusal, induced by mere curiosity, it occurred to us that some brief account of the book, and of the train of thought which it had suggested to us, and would probably suggest to most English readers, would not be unacceptable.
It is worthy of remark, that it is not uniformly from the most perfect works that we derive the greatest stimulant to thinking, or the largest supply of food for reflection. Many an important step in intellectual progress has been due to an author, not one of whose views have been finally adopted, or would have borne perhaps a searching examination. The startling effect of paradox—the conflict with it—the perplexing entanglement of known truth with manifest error,—all this has supplied a more bracing and vigorous exercise for the mind, than lucid tenets lucidly set forth by writers of unimpeachable good sense. God forbid that any one should accuse us of saying, that it is better to read a bad book than a good one; this would be the greatest of all absurdities; but there are eras in our mental progress when much is gained by the contest with bold and subtle fallacies. There is not a book in our own language more replete with paradox and sophistry, with half truths and tortuous reasonings, than Godwin's Political Justice; yet we doubt not there are those living who would acknowledge that the perusal of that once, and for a short time, celebrated treatise, did more, by the incessant combat it provoked, to make evident to them the real constitution of human society, than the smooth sagacity of a hundred Paleys could have done.
Indeed, when we compare the Political Justice with the reveries of Communism, so rife amongst our neighbours, we feel proud of our English dreamer. Godwin's scheme was somewhat as if one of the ancient stoics, not content with imposing upon his wise man rules of conduct quite independent of all human passions and affections, had resolved that the whole multitude of the species should demean themselves according to the same impracticable rules, and should learn to live, and labour, and enjoy, like reasoning automata. Under the light diffused upon them by the author of the Political Justice, men were to set aside all selfishness—all their natural, and even kindly affections—and to act in unceasing conformity to certain abstractions of the reasoning faculty; were, in short, neither to love nor to hate; but, sitting in eternal judgment over themselves, were simply to reason and to act. Like the iron figures that formerly stood elevated above the living crowd of Fleet Street, on either side of the venerable clock of St Dunstan's, they were to keep their eye fixed on the dial-plate of a most well-regulated conscience; and ever, as the hour came round, they were to rise and strike, and then subside into their metallic repose. Still, however, the great sentiment of justice, to which Godwin made his appeal, afforded him a far more noble and manly topic than the affected philanthropy on which so many Frenchmen have been descanting. Justice, though not understood after the manner of Mr Godwin, is a sentiment which really lives and moves in the very heart of society. Men respond to an appeal to their sense of justice; they become ungovernable if that sense of justice is long outraged; they work upon this sentiment; they can labour and endure according to its dictates: but for this philanthropy, or fraternity, of which we hear so much—what has it ever done? It never regulated the transactions of a single day; never produced a grain of corn, or a shred of apparel; produces nothing but theories. It is a vain, importunate, idle, and clamorous sentiment: it is justice all on one side; it demands incessantly, it gives never; it has hands to petition with, to clutch with, to rob with, to murder with, but not to work with; it has no hand that holds the plough, or strikes upon the anvil.
The Système des Contradictions Economiques may lay claim to the same sort of praise we have accorded to the Political Justice: it prompts reflection; and a man of intellect sufficiently robust to profit by such rude gymnastics, will not regret its perusal. It also avoids, like the work of Godwin, the pernicious cant of universal philanthropy—pernicious when brought forward as a general motive of human actions—and looks for a renovation of society in a more enlightened sentiment of justice—determining anew the value of each man's labour, and securing to him that value—property being legitimate only (so far as we can understand our author) when it contains in it the labour of the proprietor. How Justice is to execute the task which M. Prudhon, in very vague and mysterious terms, imposes upon her, we have not the least idea; nor has an attentive perusal of his book given us the remotest conception of any practical scheme that he would even make experiment of. But, at all events, it is better to descant on the energetic sentiment of justice, which desires to earn and keep its own, than on the idle sublimities of a universal fraternity—a sentiment which relaxes the springs of industry, by teaching every man to expect everything from his neighbours, or from an omnipotent abstraction he calls the state. It is a difference of some importance, because all these schemes for the renovation of society do, in fact, end in a sort of moral or immoral preachment.
When we have said thus much, and added that M. Prudhon attacks the Communists, of all shades and descriptions, in a quite overwhelming manner, utterly crushing and annihilating them,—we have said the utmost that can be admitted, or devised, in praise of his work. It would require a much longer paragraph to exhaust all that might be justly said in its condemnation. It is strewed over, knee-deep, with metaphysical trash. It is steeped in atheism, or something worse, and infinitely more foolish; for there is a pretence of sustaining "the hypothesis" of a God, for no other ostensible reason than to provide an object for the blasphemy that follows. The rudest savages, in their first conception of a God, regard him as an enemy, and offer sacrifices to propitiate an unprovoked and wanton anger—the reflected image of their own wild passions. M. Prudhon's philosophy has actually brought him, in one respect, back to the creed of the savages. He proves, by some insane process not worth following, that the Creator of man is essentially opposed to the progress of human society, and is to be utterly deserted, desecrated, defied. He does not, indeed, sacrifice, like the savage; he rather talks rebellion, like Satan. No one would believe, who had not read the book, with what a mixture of outrage and levity he speaks of the most sacred of all beings: it is the doctrine of the rebel-fiend taught with the gesticulation of a satyr.
We shall not quote a single passage to justify this censure, for the same reason that we should not extract the indecencies of a volume in order to prove the charge of obscenity. Why should the ear be wounded, or the mind soiled and disgusted, when no end is answered except the conviction of an offender who, utterly dead to shame, rejoices to see his impurities or impieties pitched abroad?
Notwithstanding that formidable appearance of metaphysics to which we have alluded—his Kant and his Hegel, his thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and all his pretensions to extraordinary profundity—it so happens that the very first elements of that science of political economy, which he affects to look down upon as from a higher level, are often miserably misapprehended; or—what is certainly not more to his credit—they are thrown, for a season, into a wilful oblivion. If he is discoursing upon the division of labour, and its effect upon the remuneration of the workman, he ignores, for the time being, the manifest relation between population and wages, and represents the wages as decreasing only because the nature of the work required becomes more and more simple and mechanical. If he is discoursing upon population, and its pressure upon the means of subsistence, he can venture to forget the very laws of nature. "You state," he says, "that population increases in a geometrical ratio—1, 2, 4, 8, 16; well, I will show that capital and wealth follow a law of progression more rapid still, of which each term may be considered as the square of the corresponding number of the geometrical series, as 1, 4, 16, 64, 256."[6] Since all our wealth is derived originally from the soil, man must, therefore, have it in his power to increase the fertility of the soil according to the above ratio. It will be something new to our farmers to learn this.