the surface of society: he does not prove that the same spot, at the same moment, is both black and white. From Kant he slides to Hegel, as if their tenets on this subject at all resembled each other. Kant saw in his contradictions an arrest of the reason, Hegel the very principle and condition of all thought. Thought involves contradictions. In the simplest idea, that of being, is involved the idea of no-being; neither can we think of no-being without having the idea of being. Now as _thought_ and _thing_ are identical in the absolute, (this every one knows,) whatever may be said of the thought may be said of the thing, and hence the celebrated formula, Being = no being--_sein_ = _nicht sein_--something and nothing are identical. As thought and thing are identical in the absolute, logic is a creation and creation is a logic; thus the metaphysics of Hegel became a cosmogony in which all things proceed according to the laws of thought, and are therefore developed in a series of contradictions. Now let M. Prudhon be as thorough master of the Hegelian logic, or the Hegelian cosmogony, as he desires to be esteemed, how, in the name of common sense, can he hope to clear up the difficulties of political economy by mixing them with a philosophy like this? How will his thesis and his antithesis help us to adjust the claims between labour and capital? If he has any adjustment to propose--if he has found what he calls his synthesis--let us hear it. If the synthesis is only to be developed in those future evolutions of time, which neither he nor we can divine, of what use all this angry exposition of the inevitable _Contradictions_ that mark and constitute the progress of humanity? Enough of these metaphysics. It was necessary to say this much of the peculiar form into which M. Prudhon has chosen to cast his thoughts; but there will be no occasion to allude to it again. Whatever there is of truth or significance in his work, may easily be transferred into a language familiar and intelligible to all.