Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/202

of pleasure, and the union of hearts is succeeded by sensual desires, and . . . . . In order to form an opinion of such things, it is not necessary to have roamed, like St. Simon, through the haunts of infamy."

After having exposed and refuted the socialist theories in general, respecting the problems which form the subject of this book, it only remains to explain and refute the theory of Mr. Proudhon, in order to close this long and complicated discussion. Mr. Proudhon explains his doctrine briefly but fully in chapter viii. of the work we have just cited, in the following words: "The education of liberty, the subjection of our instincts, the freeing or redemption of our soul, this is the signification, as Lessing has shown, of the Christian mystery, rightly interpreted. This education will last as long as our life and that of mankind. Moses, Budha, Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster, were all apostles of expiation, and living symbols of penance. Man is by nature a sinner, which does not precisely mean that he is evil, but rather that he is imperfectly formed. His destiny is to be forever occupied in recreating his ideal within himself."

In this profession of faith there is a portion of both the Catholic and socialist theories, and also something of what belongs to neither, and which constitutes the individuality of the Proudhonian theory.

The Catholic element consists in the recognition of the existence of evil and of sin, in the confession that sin is in man and not in society, and that evil does not come from society but from man, and lastly, in the explicit acknowledgment of the necessity of redemption and repentance.

The socialist element is found in the affirmation that man is the redeemer; while that which constitutes the