Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/270

but always seems to be, original. He cannot be so, for the premises once given, there can be nothing less original than the consequence; and yet he always appears to be so, for what can seem more original than the concentration in one man of all the contradictions of three contradictory ages? This does not mean that Mr. Proudhon is not in search of originality. Mr. Proudhon really seeks to be original when he undertakes to express by a formula the synthesis of all antinomies, and to find the supreme equation of all contradictions. But it is precisely here, that is, in the manifestation of his own individuality, that he discovers his incapacity. His equation is only the beginning of a new series of contradictions, and his synthesis that of a new succession of antinomies. For example, when placed between the right of property, which is the thesis, and communism, which is its antithesis, he seeks the synthesis in that right of property which is not hereditary; he does not perceive that property which is not hereditary is not property, and conse quently that his synthesis is no synthesis, because it does not suppress the contradiction, and is only another way of rejecting the vanquished thesis, and affirming the victorious antithesis. Or, when again, in order to express by a formula the synthesis he wishes to establish, and which must, on the one hand, reconcile authority which is the thesis, and on the other, liberty, which is its antithesis; when in order to do this he denies the right of government and proclaims anarchy, if he intends that there should be no government whatever, his synthesis is in this case only the negation of the thesis, which is authority, and the affirmation of the antithesis, which is human liberty. If, on the con-