"Nothing is in reality less democratic than the people," said he, occasionally, and he did not allow himself the least delusion as regards their slavish love for authority. For that very reason, he thought democracy must be changed into "demopaedy," and a complete revolution of a popular spirit must be caused by education. But to prove that, even with the help of democracy, people would not be ripe for pure democracy, or, rightly speaking, for anarchy, we can quote an authority which he never doubted, namely, himself. In an access of pessimism, he said once, "I have thought I have noticed (may philosophy pardon me for it!) that the more reason develops in us the more brutal becomes passion when once it is let loose. It appears then that the angel and the biped brute which together compose our human nature in their intimate union, instead of mingling their attributes, only live side by side with one another. If progress leads us to that, of what use is it?" This is a bad look-out for the great moral revolution upon which Proudhon more and more based all his hopes. Proudhon has had the most varied judgment passed upon him. Some have treated him as an obscure pamphlet writer. Louis Blanc calls him a prizefighter; Laveleye, in a history of Socialism, only considers him worth mentioning in order to call his ideas "the dreams of a raving idiot"; Karl Marx denies him either talent or knowledge; many have considered him as a Jesuitical hypocrite; others, again, his followers and representatives, have called him the greatest man of the century. Ludwig Pfau called him the clearest thinker that France had produced since Descartes. But the spectacle is by no means new. In reality, but little courage and wit are to-day needed to acquire the applause of an ignorant multitude which has no idea of Proudhon's train of thought by the condemnation of the father of Anarchism. "Justice must be done to all, even to Louis Napoleon," exclaimed Proudhon, to the great astonishment _orbis et urbis_ after the _coup d'etat_; and not to take a lower standard than the father of Anarchism, we exclaim also, "Justice must be done to all, even to Proudhon." The most usual reproach which is cast against Proudhon is that he is contradictory and confused. This reproof is generally made by people who know no more about Proudhon than the paradox "Property is Theft," and from this one expression call him confused and contradictory.