IT IS GOOD, you say, TO INTEREST THE LABORER. I say
further that it is just. But I maintain that this INTEREST,
more powerful over man than voluntarily accepted obligation, more
powerful, in a word, than DUTY, accuses man. Socialism goes
backward in morality, and it turns up its nose at Christianity.
It does not understand charity, and yet, to hear it, one would
suppose that it invented charity.
See, moreover, observe the socialists, what fortunate fruits the
perfecting of our social order has already borne! The present
generation is undeniably better than its predecessors: are we
wrong in concluding that a perfect society will produce perfect
citizens? Say rather, reply the conservative believers in the
dogma of the fall, that, religion having purified hearts, it is
not astonishing that institutions have felt the effects. Now let
religion finish its work, and have no fears about society.
So speak and retort in an endless wandering from the question the
theorists of the two schools. Neither understand that humanity,
to use a Biblical expression, is one and constant in its
generations,--that is, that everything in it, at every period of
its development, in the individual as in the mass, proceeds from
the same principle, which is, not BEING, but BECOMING.
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