The poor rise up against the rich, men without fortune or profession against property; the populace against the bourgeoisie; labour against capital; agriculture against manufactures; the country against the town; the provinces against the metropolis; the denizen against the stranger. And theorists step in, and form a system of this antagonism. “It is the ‹inevitable› result, they say, of the nature of things, that is to say, of Liberty. Man is endued with ‹self-love›, and hence comes all the evil; for since he is endued with self-love, he seeks to better his own condition, and he can only do so by entailing misery on his brethren. Let us hinder him, then, from following his inclinations; let us stifle his liberty, change the human heart, substitute other motives for those which God has placed there: let us invent and constitute an artificial society!” When they have got this length, an unlimited career opens itself to their reason or imagination. If they are possessed of a disputatious turn and a peevish temper, they enter with eagerness into an analysis of Evil. They dissect it, they put it in the crucible, they interrogate it, they remount to its causes, they pursue it to its consequences; and, as by reason of our native imperfection there is nothing in which Evil is not present, they asperse and disparage everything. They exhibit to us Property, Family, Capital, Labour, Competition, Liberty, Personal Interest, only in one of their aspects, and always on the dark side, the side which injures or [p064] destroys. Their lectures on the natural history of man are, if I may use the expression, clinical lectures—the subject is always on his deathbed. They impiously defy God to reconcile what is said of His infinite goodness with the existence of evil. They stain and sully everything; they disgust us with everything; they dispute everything; and yet they obtain only a melancholy and dangerous success with those classes whom suffering disposes but too much to despair. If, on the other hand, such theorists have a heart open to benevolence, a mind which is pleased with illusions, they rush to the region of chimeras. They dream of an Oceania, an Atlantis, a Salente, a Spensonie, an Icarie, a Utopia, a Phalanstère,[20] and they people these imaginary regions with a docile, loving, devoted race who always avoid setting themselves up against the fancies of the dreamer. He installs himself complacently in the seat of Providence. He arranges, he disposes, he moulds men after his own fancy. Nothing stops him. He never encounters deceit. He resembles the Roman preacher, who, after having transformed his square cap into Rousseau, refuted warmly the ‹Contrat Social›, and triumphantly reduced his adversary to silence. It is thus that our Reformers dazzle those who suffer by means of seductive pictures of ideal felicity, well fitted to disgust them with the hard necessities of real life.