Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/182

tainly superior to almost all contemporary rationalists. As to his consistency, the reader will be enabled to form some 1dea of it from the passages which we are about to quote from his writings, in which he treats of the subjects discussed in this book.

In the Confessions of a Revolutionist, Mr. Proudhon thus defines God: “God is the universal force, and is penetrated with intelligence, which produces, through an infinite knowledge of itself, the beings of all kingdoms, from the imponderable fluid up to man, and which only in man acquires a knowledge of self, and says—I am. God, far from being our master, is the object of our study. How can the thaumaturgists have had the audacity to convert him into a personal being, who is at times an absolute king, like the God of the Jews and Christians; and at other times a constitutional sovereign, like the God of the deists, whose incomprehensible providence over us appears to be perpetually and solely exercised, both by his precepts and acts, in confounding our reason?’ Here Mr. Proudhon has affirmed three things: first, the assertion of a universal, intelligent, and divine force, which i1s pantheism; second, a higher incarnation of God in humanity, which is humanitarianism; third, the negation of a personal God, and of his providence, which results in deism.

In the work, which is entitled The System of Economic Contradictions, Ch. viii., Mr. Proudhon says: “I shall set aside the pantheistic hypothesis, which has always appeared to me either hypocritical or cowardly. God is personal, or he does not exist.” Here he affirms all that he denies and denies all that he affirms in the preceding sentences. These affirm a pantheistical and