anche-Comte who wished to devote themselves to a literary or
scientific career. Proudhon entered as a competitor, and won the
scholarship. In the memoir of his life, which he drew up for the
Academy, he said: "Born and reared in the midst of the working
classes, to which I belong with my heart and in my affections, and
above all by the community of sufferings and aspirations, it will be
my greatest joy, if I receive the approval of the Academy, to work
unceasingly with the help of philosophy and science, and with the
whole energy of my will and all my mental powers, for the physical,
moral, and intellectual improvement of those whom I call brothers and
companions, in order to sow amongst them the seeds of a doctrine which
I consider as the law of the moral world, and hoping to succeed in my
endeavours, to appear before you, gentlemen, as their representative."
As to the studies to which he devoted himself in Paris for several
years after receiving the scholarship, Proudhon relates himself that
he received light, not from the socialistic schools which then existed
and were coming into fashion, not from partisans or from journalists,
but that he began with a study of the antiquities of Socialism, a
study which, according to his opinion, was absolutely necessary in
order to determine the theoretical and practical laws of the social
movement.

It gives us a somewhat strange sensation to learn that Proudhon, the
father of Anarchism, made these sociological studies in the Bible; and
this Book of books is even to-day the most important source of empiric
sociology. For no other book reflects so authentically and elaborately
the development of an important social Individualism, and in
Proudhon's time the Bible (in view of the complete lack of
ethnographic observations which then prevailed) was also almost the
only source of studies of this kind. And if also it must be admitted
that these studies could not fail to be one-sided, yet it cannot be
denied that Proudhon proceeded in a way incomparably more correct than
most social philosophers have done either before or since, for they
have built up their systems generally by deductive and dogmatic
methods.

An essay which Proudhon wrote upon the introduction of Sunday rest,
from the point of view of morality, health, and the relations of a
family estate, brought him a bronze medal from the Academy, and he was
able afterwards to say with truth: "My Socialism received its baptism
fr