flickers here and there even now. Need I say that I have no intention
of rehabilitating him? I do not think that the fight which must be
undertaken against Marxist Atheism calls for a return to Proudhon.
I am not enamoured, any more than he was, of "doctrinal reconcilia-
tions" and harmony at any price. My purpose then is, not to soften
the impact of his most outrageous theses, but to combat them. But
to combat them, we must first understand them, both in their tenor
and in their origin. Hitherto nothing like a thorough investigation
(from the Christian standpoint) of Proudhon's attitude with regard to
Christianity has appeared. Yet such a work would seem to be desir-
able on several grounds. Proudhon bears witness to the awakening
and the revolt of the lower classes. He also bears witness--with a
dreadful bias, but frequently also with clear-seeing eyes--to the
Catholicism of his day. More than anything else, the religious problem
exercised him without respite, and never once did he look upon it
as being plainly solved. This it is which distinguishes him from so
many others. With him we do at least discover some attempt to
criticize his own criticisms. His thought is caught up in a rhythm
which brings him back of necessity upon his own negations, so that
he himself calls to us, so to speak, to draw closer to him by taking
sides against him. To respond to such a call is not "to enlist him
in our ranks"; we shall still be refuting him through the alliance he
offers.

In one of those dark moods to which he often gave way, he once
wrote: "We must no longer be under any illusion. Europe is tired
of order and thought; it is entering upon an age of brutal force, of
contempt for principles and of orgy. We simple folk, gentle in manners,
upright in conscience, have lived too long; it only remains for us to
weep as we behold the decadence of the Christian nations." Pessimism
apart, does not this despairing cry show the inclinations of his heart?
Even when he is attacking us with the utmost fury, his voice still
stimulates us as if urging us on to better things. Be it a question
of faith, of hope or of charity, the way he has of shaking us up is
good for us in that it makes us put our own house in order. We
condemn his errors, we repudiate his blasphemies, we appeal to
Proudhon himself, to Proudhon in his better senses, against the
excesses which carried him away, but not on any single occasion is
there between ourselves and him that complete and final rupture
which makes all dialogue impossible.

If now, away beyond his ideas, we strive to know the man himself,
sympathy can be given a freer rein. "I believe," he remarked, "that

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