In compensation, we presume, for this occasional oblivion of the truisms of political economy—truisms, in fact, of common sense—we have, here and there, strange and novel definitions and explanations, ushered in with that pomp which an egotistical Frenchman can alone display, and turning out to be as idle verbiage as was ever penned. Take, as the first specimen we can call to mind, the following definition of labour. We cannot attempt to translate it: the English language does not easily mould itself to nonsense of this sort:—"Qu'est-ce donc que le travail? Nul encore ne l'a défini. Le travail est l'émission de l'esprit. Travailler, c'est dépenser sa vie; travailler, en un mot, c'est se dévouer, c'est mourir. Que les utopistes ne nous parlent plus de dévoûment: c'est le travail, exprimé et mesuré par ses œuvres."—(Vol. ii., p. 465.) Labour needed to be defined, it seemed; and this is the definition, "L'émission de l'esprit!" And in play, then, as well as in work, is there no emission of the spirits, or mind, or life of the man? Did M. Prudhon never run a race, or handle a bat at cricket, or ride with the hounds? or can he not remember that such things are, though not in his philosophy? But dear, inexpressibly dear to M. Prudhon, is every idea of his own that savours of paradox; and the more it violates common sense, the more tenderly he clings to it, cherishes, and vaunts it. This, doubtless, is one of his favourite children. His celebrated aphorism, "La Propriété c'est le vol,"—he contradicts it himself in every page of his writings, yet boasts and cherishes it as his greatest possession, and the most remarkable discovery of the age. "La définition de la propriété," he says, in answer to a sarcasm of M. Michelet, "est mienne, et toute mon ambition est de prouver que j'en ai compris le sens et l'étendue. La propriété c'est le vol! il ne se dit pas, en mille ans, deux mots comme celui-là. Je n'ai d'autre bien sur la terre que cette définition de la propriété: mais je la tiens plus précieuse que les millions des Rothschild, et j'ose dire qu'elle sera l'évènement le plus considérable du gouvernement de Louis-Philippe."—(Vol. ii., p. 328.)
Even in that tenebrous philosophy which he has imported from Germany, and which he teaches with such caustic condescension to the political economists, he is very much at fault. It is always, we know, an adventurous matter to accuse any one who deals in the idealistic metaphysics of modern Germany of obscurity, or of imperfect knowledge of the theories taught in his own school. The man has but to dive into deeper mud to escape from you. Follow him you assuredly cannot; he is out of sight, and the thick sediment deters; and thus, in the eyes of all who are not aware what the capture would cost to any hapless pursuer, the fugitive is sure of his triumph. Nevertheless, we venture to assert that M. Prudhon is but a young, and a not very promising scholar in the philosophy of Kant and of Hegel. Two very manifest blunders it will be enough to indicate: he assimilates his Contradictions Economiques to the Antinomies of the Pure Reason developed by Kant; and he confounds Kant with Hegel in a matter where they are widely opposed, and speaks as if the same law of contradiction were common to both.
After alluding to some of his own "contradictions," he says, "Tel est encore le problème de la divisibilité de la matière à l'infini, que Kant a démontré pouvoir être nié et affirmé, tour-à-tour, par des arguments également plausibles et irréfutables."—(Vol. i. p. 43.) It is the object of Kant, in one of the most striking portions of the Critique of Pure Reason, to show that, in certain problems, the mind is capable of being led with equal force of conviction to directly opposite conclusions. The pure reason, it seems, gets hold of the forms of the understanding, and can extract nothing from them but a series of antinomies, like that which M. Prudhon has alluded to, where the infinite divisibility of matter is both proved and disproved with equal success. Now what analogy is there between the contradictions which M. Prudhon can develop, in any one of our social laws, and the antinomies of Kant? In these last, two opposite conclusions of speculative reason are arrived at, which destroy each other; in the Contradictions Economiques, the good and evil flowing from the same law may very easily co-exist. They affect different persons, or the same persons at different times. Free competition, for instance, in trade or manufacture, may be viewed on its bright side as the promoter of industry and invention; on its dark side as the fomenter of strife, and the inflicter of injury on those who lose in the game of wealth. But the benefit and injury arising from this source do not destroy each other, like the yes and no of an abstract proposition; they can be balanced against each other; they co-exist, and, for aught we see, will eternally co-exist. Let them be as strikingly opposed as you will, they can have nothing in common with the antinomies of Kant. M. Prudhon proves that there is darkness and brightness scattered over the surface of society: he does not prove that the same spot, at the same moment, is both black and white.
From Kant he slides to Hegel, as if their tenets on this subject at all resembled each other. Kant saw in his contradictions an arrest of the reason, Hegel the very principle and condition of all thought. Thought involves contradictions. In the simplest idea, that of being, is involved the idea of no-being; neither can we think of no-being without having the idea of being. Now as thought and thing are identical in the absolute, (this every one knows,) whatever may be said of the thought may be said of the thing, and hence the celebrated formula, Being = no being—sein = nicht sein—something and nothing are identical.
As thought and thing are identical in the absolute, logic is a creation and creation is a logic; thus the metaphysics of Hegel became a cosmogony in which all things proceed according to the laws of thought, and are therefore developed in a series of contradictions. Now let M. Prudhon be as thorough master of the Hegelian logic, or the Hegelian cosmogony, as he desires to be esteemed, how, in the name of common sense, can he hope to clear up the difficulties of political economy by mixing them with a philosophy like this? How will his thesis and his antithesis help us to adjust the claims between labour and capital? If he has any adjustment to propose—if he has found what he calls his synthesis—let us hear it. If the synthesis is only to be developed in those future evolutions of time, which neither he nor we can divine, of what use all this angry exposition of the inevitable Contradictions that mark and constitute the progress of humanity?
Enough of these metaphysics. It was necessary to say this much of the peculiar form into which M. Prudhon has chosen to cast his thoughts; but there will be no occasion to allude to it again. Whatever there is of truth or significance in his work, may easily be transferred into a language familiar and intelligible to all.
We have eaten, says one, of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the taste of them has been thenceforth invariably blended together. There is a law of compensation—thus another expresses it—throughout the world, both moral and physical, by which every evil is balanced by its good, and every good by its besetting evil. Humanity, says a third, progresses without doubt, and obtains at each stage a fuller and a higher life; but there is an original proportion of misery in its lot, from which there is no escape: this also swells and darkens as we rise. To use the language of chemistry, you may increase the volume of this ambient life we breathe, but still, to every one-hundred part of vital air there shall be added twenty-five of mephitic vapour. All these are different modes of expressing the homely truth, that a shadow of evil falls even from the best of things; and it is this truth which is really developed in the Contradictions Economiques.
It is a truth which, at times, it may be very needful fully to recognise. When men of sincere convictions are found agitating society for some organic change, their errors may be always traced to an over-sanguine and one-sided view of the capabilities of man for happiness. The conservative and the movement parties, philosophically considered, may be described as branching out of different opinions on the probable or possible progress of society. The philosophical conservative has accepted humanity as it is—as, in its great features, it is exhibited throughout all regions of the earth, and in the page of history: he hails with welcome every addition to human happiness; he believes in progress, he derides the notion of perfectibility,—it is a word he cannot use; he recognises much happiness coming in to mankind from many and various sources, but still believes that man will never find himself so content on earth as to cease looking forward for the complement and perfection of his felicity to another world. The philosopher of the movement party has made a sort of religion of his hopes of humanity: he conceives some ideal state, and anticipates its development here; he dismantles heaven and immortality to furnish out his masquerade on earth; or, with still vaguer notions, he rushes forward upon reforms that imply, for their justification, the existence of what never yet was seen—a temperate and enlightened multitude.
It follows that the conservative has allotted to him the ungracious and invidious task of discouraging the hopes of a too eager philanthropy; he is compelled to show, of certain evils, that they are constantly to be contended against, but never can be eradicated. Society has been often compared to a pyramid; its broad basis on the earth, and towering high or not, according as circumstances were propitious to its formation; but always the broad basis lying on the earth. He accepts the ancient simile; he recognises the unalterable pyramid. Without aid of priest or legislator, society assumes this form; it crystallises thus; higher and higher, broader and broader, it rises, and extends, but still the lowest stratum is lying close upon the earth. Will you disguise the fact? It is fruitless, and the falsehood only recoils upon yourself, rendering what truth you utter weak and suspicious. Will you strive to make the pyramid stand upon its apex? It will not stand; and what god or giant have you to hold it there? Or will you join the madman, who, because the lowest stratum cannot be made the highest, nor any other but the lowest, would level the whole pyramid to the ground, and make every part touch the earth? No; you will do all in your power for that lowest stratum, but you will not consent that, because all cannot be cultivated and refined, no one shall have a chance of becoming so. You accept the pyramid.
When M. Prudhon criticises the laws which preside over the production and distribution of wealth, and shows their twofold and antagonistic influence, he is but illustrating the inevitable formation of our pyramid. Let us follow him in a few instances.