If the error is on my side, however, the evil would
not be so great. It must be inferred that I know nothing about the true
interests of the masses, or the march of human progress; and that all my
arguments are but as so many grains of sand, by which the car of the
revolution will certainly not be arrested.
But if, on the contrary, MM. Proudhon and Thore are deceiving
themselves, it follows that they are leading the people astray--that
they are showing them the evil where it does not exist; and thus giving
a false direction to their ideas, to their antipathies, to their
dislikes, and to their attacks. It follows that the misguided people are
rushing into a horrible and absurd struggle, in which victory would be
more fatal than defeat; since, according to this supposition, the result
would be the realisation of universal evils, the destruction of every
means of emancipation, the consummation of its own misery.
This is just what M. Proudhon has acknowledged, with perfect good
faith. "The foundation stone," he told me, "of my system is the
_gratuitousness of credit_. If I am mistaken in this, Socialism is a
vain dream." I add, it is a dream, in which the people are tearing
themselves to pieces. Will it, therefore, be a cause for surprise, if,
when they awake, they find themselves mangled and bleeding? Such a
danger as this is enough to justify me fully, if, in the course of the
discussion, I allow myself to be led into some trivialities and some
prolixity.
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