And socialism itself,
ever imitating the past, makes no other pretence: what is,
indeed, the organization which it claims, if not a stronger
guarantee of justice, a more complete limitation of liberty?
The characteristic trait of the merchant is to make everything
either an object or an instrument of traffic. Disassociated from
his fellows, his interests separated from those of others, he is
for and against all deeds, all opinions, all parties. A
discovery, a science, is in his eyes an instrument of war, out of
the way of which he tries to keep, and which he would like to
annihilate, unless he can make use of it himself to kill his
competitors. An artist, an educated person, is an artilleryman
who knows how to handle the weapon, and whom he tries to corrupt,
if he cannot win him. The merchant is convinced that logic is
the art of proving at will the true and the false; he was the
inventor of political venality, traffic in consciences,
prostitution of talents, corruption of the press. He knows how
to find arguments and advocates for all lies, all iniquities.
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