4.That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be observed without violating justice or social equality.
This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we will call LIBERTY.
_libertas, librare, libratio, libra_,--liberty, to liberate, libration, balance (pound),--words which have a common derivation.Liberty is the balance of rights and duties.To make a man free is to balance him with others,--that is, to put him or their level.
In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism.We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty.
Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the absence of equality there is no society.
Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.
Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the limits of the law.
Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.
We can now say, in the words of M.Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate."Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula, is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our actions.This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for, which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place pure reason never can fill.DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in connection with ourselves, a DUTY.
We need to eat and sleep.It is our right to procure those things which are necessary to rest and nourishment.It is our duty to use them when Nature requires it.
We need to labor in order to live.To do so is both our right and our duty.
We need to love our wives and children.It is our duty to protect and support them.It is our right to be loved in preference to all others.Conjugal fidelity is justice.
Adultery is high treason against society.
We need to exchange our products for other products.It is our right that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter, to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption.Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy.
We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason.It is our right to maintain our freedom.It is our duty to respect that of others.
We need to be appreciated by our fellows.It is our duty to deserve their praise.It is our right to be judged by our works.
Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest.
It contents itself with preventing violations of equality.
"Choose," it tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both." All our legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling.
Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it.In social equality, emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own reward.No one suffers by the victory.
Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it can dispense with it.Justice alone suffices to maintain the social equilibrium.Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation.Happy, however, the man who can say, "Isacrifice myself."
In a monthly publication, the first number of which has just appeared under the name of "L'Egalitaire," self-sacrifice is laid down as a principle of equality.This is a confusion of ideas.
Self-sacrifice, taken alone, is the last degree of inequality.
To seek equality in self-sacrifice is to confess that equality is against nature.Equality must be based upon justice, upon strict right, upon the principles invoked by the proprietor himself;otherwise it will never exist.Self-sacrifice is superior to justice; but it cannot be imposed as law, because it is of such a nature as to admit of no reward.It is, indeed, desirable that everybody shall recognize the necessity of self-sacrifice, and the idea of "L'Egalitaire" is an excellent example.
Unfortunately, it can have no effect.What would you reply, indeed, to a man who should say to you, "I do not want to sacrifice myself"? Is he to be compelled to do so? When self-sacrifice is forced, it becomes oppression, slavery, the exploitation of man by man.Thus have the proletaires sacrificed themselves to property.
Liberty is essentially an organizing force.To insure equality between men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c., in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and products.There commences the science of public and private right, the true political economy.It is for the writers on jurisprudence, henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe the new laws, and bring peace upon earth.Knowledge and genius they do not lack; the foundation is now laid for them.
