Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/268

system, taking care not to admit enough to confound him with the supporters of any particular doctrine, and yet sufficient to excite the opposition of its adversaries. There are pages of his writings to which all the friends of order could subscribe; then, other pages are intended for the partisans of revolution; while again, at other times, he expresses still other opinions in common with those entertained by the most fanatical democrats, and these sentiments are directed against the friends of order. Sometimes he ostentatiously displays the most shameless atheism, which he intends for the Catholics; and again he might be mistaken for a fervent Christian, when he wishes to provoke the materialists and atheists. The chief happiness of this man is to oblige every one to oppose him, and to resist every one. When he asserts that he regards all who attempt to control him as enemies, he has only revealed his secret in part; the rest consists in his being inimical to all who listen to and follow him. If the world should ever become converted to his doctrines, in order to oppose the world he would cease to profess them and would adopt others; and if the world should still continue to agree with him, he would assuredly hang himself upon the first tree. If there can be a greater misfortune than that of not being able to love which is peculiarly the misfortune of Satan it must be that of not wishing to be loved, which is the Proudhonian misfortune. And yet this man, frightful object of the divine wrath as he is, preserves some where, in the most hidden depths of his gloomy and darkened being, a ray of light and love, which, although it is nearly obscured by the rapidly increasing shades, still distinguishes him from the infernal spirits. He is not utterly abandoned to hatred and darkness. He is