The guarantee of
our liberty lies in the progress of our torture.
CHAPTER V.
THIRD PERIOD.--COMPETITION.
Between the hundred-headed hydra, division of labor, and the
unconquered dragon, machinery, what will become of humanity? A
prophet has said it more than two thousand years ago: Satan
looks on his victim, and the fires of war are kindled, Aspexit
gentes, et dissolvit. To save us from two scourges, famine and
pestilence, Providence sends us discord.
Competition represents that philosophical era in which, a semi-
understanding of the antinomies of reason having given birth to
the art of sophistry, the characteristics of the false and the
true were confounded, and in which, instead of doctrines, they
had nothing but deceptive mental tilts. Thus the industrial
movement faithfully reproduces the metaphysical movement; the
history of social economy is to be found entire in the writings
of the philosophers. Let us study this interesting phase, whose
most striking characteristic is to take away the judgment of
those who believe as well as those who protest.
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