shame, this folly lasted for two
years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle
in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I
have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to
the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting
a proposition between the horns of a dilemma, in decomposing,
distinguishing, separating, denying, affirming, admitting, as if I could
pass abstractions through a sieve.

I selected justice as the subject-matter of my experiments.
Finally, after a thousand decompositions, recompositions, and double
compositions, I found at the bottom of my analytical crucible, not the
criterion of certainty, but a metaphysico-economico-political treatise,
whose conclusions were such that I did not care to present them in a
more artistic or, if you will, more intelligible form. The effect which
this work produced upon all classes of minds gave me an idea of the
spirit of our age, and did not cause me to regret the prudent and
scientific obscurity of my style. How happens it that to-day I am
obliged to defend my intentions, when my conduct bears the evident
impress of such lofty morality?

You have read my work, sir, and you know the gist of my tedious and
scholastic lucubrations. Considering the revolutions of humanity,
the vicissitudes of empires, the transformations of property, and the
innumerable forms of justice and of right, I asked, "Are the evils which
afflict us inherent in our condition as men, or do they arise only from
an error? This inequality of fortunes which all admit to be the cause of
society's embarrassments, is it, as some assert, the effect of Nature;
or, in the division of the products of labor and the soil, may there not
have been some error in calculation? Does each laborer receive all that
is due him, and only that which is due him? In short, in the present
conditions of labor, wages, and exchange, is no one wronged?--are the
accounts well kept?--is the social balance accurate?"

Then I commenced a most laborious investigation. It was necessary to
arrange informal notes, to discuss contradictory titles, to reply to
captious allegations, to refute absurd pretensions, and to describe
fictitious debts, dishonest transactions, and fraudulent accounts. In
order to triumph over quibblers, I had to deny the authority of custom,
to examine the arguments of legislators, and to oppose science with
science itself