Even in that tenebrous philosophy which he has imported from Germany, and which he teaches with such caustic condescension to the political economists, he is very much at fault. It is always, we know, an adventurous matter to accuse any one who deals in the idealistic metaphysics of modern Germany of obscurity, or of imperfect knowledge of the theories taught in his own school. The man has but to dive into deeper mud to escape from you. Follow him you assuredly cannot; he is out of sight, and the thick sediment deters; and thus, in the eyes of all who are not aware what the capture would cost to any hapless pursuer, the fugitive is sure of his triumph. Nevertheless, we venture to assert that M. Prudhon is but a young, and a not very promising scholar in the philosophy of Kant and of Hegel. Two very manifest blunders it will be enough to indicate: he assimilates his _Contradictions Economiques_ to the _Antinomies of the Pure Reason_ developed by Kant; and he confounds Kant with Hegel in a matter where they are widely opposed, and speaks as if the same law of contradiction were common to both. After alluding to some of his own "contradictions," he says, "Tel est encore le problème de la divisibilité de la matière à l'infini, que Kant a démontré pouvoir être nié et affirmé, tour-à-tour, par des arguments également plausibles et irréfutables."--(Vol. i. p. 43.) It is the object of Kant, in one of the most striking portions of the _Critique of Pure Reason_, to show that, in certain problems, the mind is capable of being led with equal force of conviction to directly opposite conclusions. The pure reason, it seems, gets hold of the forms of the understanding, and can extract nothing from them but a series of antinomies, like that which M. Prudhon has alluded to, where the infinite divisibility of matter is both proved and disproved with equal success. Now what analogy is there between the contradictions which M. Prudhon can develop, in any one of our social laws, and the antinomies of Kant? In these last, two opposite conclusions of speculative reason are arrived at, which destroy each other; in the _Contradictions Economiques_, the good and evil flowing from the same law may very easily co-exist. They affect different persons, or the same persons at different times. Free competition, for instance, in trade or manufacture, may be viewed on its bright side as the promoter of industry and invention; on its dark side as the fomenter of strife, and the inflicter of injury on those who lose in the game of wealth. But the benefit and injury arising from this source do not destroy each other, like the yes and no of an abstract proposition; they can be balanced against each other; they co-exist, and, for aught we see, will eternally co-exist. Let them be as strikingly opposed as you will, they can have nothing in common with the antinomies of Kant. M. Prudhon proves that there is darkness and brightness scattered over