Locke, Hume, and Holbach in the eighteenth.Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion, seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed;your place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty.Go where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether you want to or not.I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young man's future.
"When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans.To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so; and when this fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town, provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a bed, books, rest, and solitude.How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark, obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember it? But that is now far away.Will that happy time ever return? Shall we one day meet again? Here my life is restless, uncertain, precarious, and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant.I do no work, I live in idleness, Iramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my books are forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works, and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets.Ilie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the following day.What is the object of these walks, you will ask.I make visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people.Then a fit of curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings: there are museums, libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to visit.I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.
"But enough of complaints.Do not allow this letter to affect you too much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency; no, I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star.I do not know yet what my calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted; I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any: but what matters it? I suffer, Ilabor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
"Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere phrases.What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers? Have you a sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No; you are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned, you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations which that word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it.
That friend is myself: put me to the test.
"GUSTAVE FALLOT."
It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for research and investigation, it was in the direction of philosophical, rather than of economical and social, questions.
Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried on a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church.As they were printing a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original Hebrew.
