Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/201

will do evil; and if it is of no advantage to him to do good, he will not do good. This being the case, society has no right to condemn man if he listens to his passions, because it is the duty of society to lead man by means of his passions. How excellent was the nature of Nero, and how gifted! What an artist's soul had Heliogabalus, who reduced prostitution to a system! And as to Tiberius, how great and energetic was his character! But what a corrupt society which perverted these divine souls, and which, notwithstanding, produced a Tacitus and a Marcus Aurelius! And this is what is called the innate goodness of man and the sanctity of his passions. An old Sappho, in the decay of her beauty, and abandoned by her lovers, consents to receive the yoke of marriage. Being no longer interested in love, she resigns herself to matrimony, and then they call this woman holy! What a great misfortune that this word holy has not the twofold meaning in the French that it has in the Hebrew language—then every one would agree as to the sanctity of Sappho." Again, his sarcasm assumes that form of brutal eloquence, which might be called the Proudhonian style. In the same work, (chapter xii.,) Mr. Proudhon expresses himself in this manner: "Let us hastily pass over these systems of St. Simon and Fourrier, and all others of a similar nature, whose authors proclaim aloud in the streets and public places that free love is united in felicitous bonds with the purest modesty, delicacy, and spirituality; sad illusion of a degraded socialism—last dream of the delirium of debauch! Let inconstancy give free license to passion, and then will the flesh tyrannize over the spirit; then will love become only the vile instrument