Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/252

its own principles, we have already seen in the preceding chapter, where we have proved that it has not admitted, as a logical result of the negation of all solidarity, the dissolution of political society, but has only proposed the annihilation of the domestic association. It is generally supposed that socialism invokes its own destruction, by the extreme consequences it deduces from its principles; but I am of opinion that it will happen quite otherwise, and that the modesty of its demands will prove fatal to it. For example, with regard to the present question, good logic requires that it should demand that a nation should change its name with each successive generation. If we accept the doctrine of solidarity, I can readily understand that the national name should be one, since the nation remains a unit throughout the entire duration of its history. That the nation which was governed by Clovis should continue to bear the same name under Louis Philippe is readily understood, and not only conceivable, but very natural, and not only natural, but it becomes necessary from the moment that we admit the solidarity of the French nation, in which there exists a communion of glories and disasters, uniting the past with the present and future generations. But what is intelligible, natural, and necessary, according to the doctrine of solidarity, is unintelligible, absurd, and unnatural, if we admit the doctrine that every generation interrupts the continuity of national renown, and of the course of time. This system presents to us as many different families and nations as there are generations; and logic exacts in this case that the names, which are the expression of things, should be subjected to the same vicissitudes as the things themselves. Therefore, with each successive