The press is an instrument two or three
hundred times more potent than the pen; therefore one is two or
three hundred times freer to enter into relation with other men
when he can spread his ideas by printing than when he can publish
them only by writing.
I will not point out all that is inexact and illogical in this
fashion of representing liberty. Since Destutt de Tracy, the
last representative of the philosophy of Condillac, the
philosophical spirit has been obscured among economists of the
French school; the fear of ideology has perverted their language,
and one perceives, in reading them, that adoration of fact has
caused them to lose even the perception of theory. I prefer to
establish the fact that M. Dunoyer, and political economy with
him, is not mistaken concerning the essence of liberty, a force,
energy, or spontaneity indifferent in itself to every action, and
consequently equally susceptible of any determination, good or
bad, useful or harmful. M. Dunoyer has had so strong a suspicion
of the truth that he writes himself:
Instead of considering liberty as a dogma, I shall present it as
a RESULT; instead of making it the attribute of man, I shall
make it the ATTRIBUTE OF CIVILIZATION; instead of imagining
forms of government calculated to establish it, I shall do my
best to explain how it is BORN OF EVERY STEP OF OUR PROGRESS.
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