Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/273

negation, and at the same time affirms the existence of good and evil, he is illogical, contradictory, and absurd. This absurdity even becomes inconceivable and monstrous, when our author proposes to found a society and a government upon the juxtaposition of these irresponsible beings. The ideas of government and of society are correlative with that of human liberty. From the negation of one proceeds the negation of the others, and he who does not affirm or deny them altogether, only simultaneously affirms or denies the same thing. I am not aware that the annals of history present an example of a more complete blindness, inconsistency, and folly than that of Owen, when, after having denied individual responsibility and liberty, he not only affirms the necessity of society and of government, but goes farther, and is guilty of the wonderful contradiction of counseling the exercise of benevolence, justice, and love to those who according to him are neither responsible nor free, and are therefore deprived of the liberty either to love or to show themselves just or benevolent, if they wish to do so. The limits within which I proposed to confine myself in undertaking this work, prevent me from a more extended investigation of the vast range of socialist contradictions. Those which we have already examined more than suffice to prove, beyond the possibility of doubt or controversy, the incontestable fact that socialism, under whatever aspect we may consider it, involves a complete contradiction, and that from the contradictory assertions of its schools, can only result an utter confusion. Its inconsistency is so palpable that it would not be difficult to exhibit it clearly, and, as it were, in relief, even in those points in which all these sectaries