not always
victorious battle for an apparently trivial cause. We do not forget
how helplessly the age in which he lived was tossed to and fro in all
social questions, from casuistical Agnosticism to arbitrary Dogmatism;
from extreme Individualism to Communism, from the standpoint of
absolute _laisser faire_ to the uttermost reliance on authority. In
placing these two worlds in sharp contrast one to another,
_Contradictions_, with all its acknowledged faults and errors,
performed an undeniable service; and this book--against which Karl
Marx has written a severe attack--will retain for all time its value
as one of the most important and thorough works of social philosophy.
In any case, the net result of the lengthy discussion, in view of the
purpose which Proudhon had before him, was absolutely nil. Proudhon
certainly endeavoured in his dialectic method to find a solution of
antitheses, and to come to some positive result; but even this
solution, which was to have been the great social remedy, is, when
divested of its philosophical garments, such a general and indefinite
draft upon the bank of social happiness that it could never be
properly paid.

"I have shewn," said Proudhon, at the close of his _Contradictions_,
"how society seeks in formula after formula, institution after
institution, that equilibrium which always escapes it, and at every
attempt always causes its luxury and its poverty to grow in equal
proportion. Since equilibrium has never yet been reached, it only
remains to hope something from a complete solution which synthetically
unites theories, which gives back to labour its effectiveness and to
each of its organs its power. Hitherto pauperism has been so
inextricably connected with labour, and want with idleness, and all
our accusations against Providence only prove our weakness." This
solution of the great problem of our century by the synthetic union of
economic and social antithesis, or, as Proudhon calls it in another
place, by a scientific, legal, immortal, and inseparable combination,
is certainly a beautiful and noble philosophy. It cannot be denied
that herewith Proudhon, who, in all his works, raged furiously against
Utopians, has none the less created a Utopia of his own, not, indeed,
by forcibly urging mankind through an ideal change, but by attempting
to mould life into an ideal shape without, like others, appealing to
force, or venturing to organise the forces of terror, in order to
accompl