Pierre joseph proudhon books of the bible

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Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.

"After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty, and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial, devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects.

In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the "General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which, after having shown the logical series of unitary governments, -- from monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the people, which is the last, -- he opposes the ideal of an-archy or self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.

Those workingmen who favor a nominal increase of wages are, unconsciously. The prosecution demanded against him was authorized by a majority of the Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that occasion. His duel with Félix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic.

. From the month of December onwards, the heart disease made rapid progress; the oppression became insupportable, his legs were swollen, and he could not sleep. I lie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the following day. Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which created them, all the economical categories are rational, -- competition, monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit.

When approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes in writing; for, as he remarks, `if there be some points which correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed, which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than ten hours of oral intercourse!' In writing to you he does not hesitate to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself defeated -- it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the breaks, the variations, in short, the evolution of his mind.

At the complementary elections, which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by seventy-seven thousand votes. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute, none of which gained the prize. At that time he entertained the idea of writing a universal history entitled "Chronos." This project was never fulfilled.

Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besançon.

He then demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819, allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing it. Ought you to feel discouraged? Since the treaty of Westphalia, and especially since the treaties of 1815, equilibrium has been the international law of Europe.

The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens, where he was secretly confined for some time. His enemies, and at that time there were many of them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter. Where the largest unitary State is, there liberty is in the greatest danger; further, if this State be democratic, despotism without the counterpoise of majorities is to be feared.

It was not long before he was recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.