Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/280

other gods; it denies humanity under one aspect, and affirms it under another; it denies society under certain forms, and affirms it under different forms; it, on the one hand, denies the family, and on the other affirms it; it denies man in one way, and affirms him in a different or contrary way. Is not all this inconsistent and cowardly? The socialism of the present day still remains a demi-Catholicism, and nothing more. If the limits of this work would permit, I could readily demonstrate that the socialist doctors who have progressed the farthest, advance a greater proportion of Catholic affirmations than of socialist negations, which produces an absurd. Catholicism and a contradictory socialism. Every affirmation which supposes a God, is necessarily the affirmation of the God of the Catholics; every affirmation which supposes humanity, inevitably leads to the Christian dogma of the unity and solidarity of humanity; every affirmation which supposes the existence of society, ends sooner or later in the Catholic affirmation respecting the social institutions; every affirmation which supposes the family, is only the acceptance of conditions which in one way or another result in affirming all that Catholicism affirms and socialism denies with regard to it; finally, every affirmation, of whatever nature, respecting man, definitively resolves itself into the affirmation of Adam, the man of the Book of Genesis. Catholicism resembles those enormous cylinders, under which if anything pass in part, it must pass entirely. If socialism does not alter its course it will inevitably pass under this formidable cylinder, dragging with it all its pontiffs and doctors, and every vestige of its existence will be obliterated.

Mr. Proudhon is not ordinarily ridiculous, yet he be-