orin with Proudhon and
Comte, utterly failing to understand Mege, the Collectivist deputy, whom
they held up to execration, him and his State Collectivism, in the same
way, moreover, as they thundered against all the other present-time
Socialist sects, without realising that these also, whatever their
nature, had more or less sprung from the same masters as themselves. And
all this seemingly indicated that Janzen was right when he declared that
the house was past repair, fast crumbling amidst rottenness and insanity,
and that it ought to be levelled to the ground.

One night, after the three visitors had gone, Pierre, who had remained
with Guillaume, saw him grow very gloomy as he slowly walked to and fro.
He, in his turn, had doubtless felt that all was crumbling. And though
his brother alone was there to hear him, he went on speaking. He
expressed all his horror of the Collectivist State as imagined by Mege, a
Dictator-State re-establishing ancient servitude on yet closer lines. The
error of all the Socialist sects was their arbitrary organisation of
Labour, which enslaved the individual for the profit of the community.
And, forced to conciliate the two great currents, the rights of society
and the rights of the individual, Guillaume had ended by placing his
whole faith in free Communism, an anarchical state in which he dreamt of
seeing the individual freed, moving and developing without restraint, for
the benefit both of himself and of all others. Was not this, said he, the
one truly scientific theory, unities creating worlds, atoms producing
life by force of attraction, free and ardent love? All oppressive
minorities would disappear; and the faculties and energies of one and all
would by free play arrive at harmony amidst the equilibrium--which
changed according to needs--of the active forces of advancing humanity.
In this wise he pictured a nation, saved from State tutelage, without a
master, almost without laws, a happy nation, each citizen of which,
completely developed by the exercise of liberty, would, of his free will,
come to an understanding with his neighbours with regard to the thousand
necessities of life. And thence would spring society, free association,
hundreds of associations which would regulate social life; though at the
same time they would remain variable, in fact often opposed and hostile
to one another. For progress is but the fruit of conflict and struggle;
the world has only been created by th