The proof of this I may be excused from giving here, as it will
appear naturally in the chapters to follow.
The socialists, while justly demanding that this antagonism be
brought to an end, have erred in mistaking its source, and in
seeing in it only a mental oversight, capable of rectification by
a legal decree. Hence this lamentable outbreak of
sentimentalism, which has rendered socialism so insipid to
positive minds, and which, spreading the absurdest delusions,
makes so many fresh dupes every day. My complaint of socialism
is not that it has appeared among us without cause, but that it
has clung so long and so obstinately to its silliness.
2. But the economists have erred no less gravely in rejecting a
priori, and just because of the contradictory, or rather
antinomical, nature of value, every idea and hope of reform,
never desiring to understand that, for the very reason that
society has arrived at its highest point of antagonism,
reconciliation and harmony are at hand. This, nevertheless, is
what a close study of political economy would have shown to its
adepts, had they paid more attention to the lights of modern
metaphysics.
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