must be had to men with great experience of life in order to ascertain exactly what sacrifices the rich must submit to on behalf of the poor dependants of the Church.
IV
The study we have just made has not led us to think that the theorists of "social peace" are on the way to an ethic worthy of acknowledgment. We now pass to a counterproof and enquire whether proletarian violence might not be capable of producing the effect in vain expected from tactics of moderation.
First of all, it must be noticed that modern philosophers seem to agree in demanding a kind of sublimity from the ethics of the future, which will distinguish it from the petty and insipid morality of the Catholics. The chief thing with which the theologians are reproached is that they make too great use of the conception of probabilism; nothing seems more absurd (not to say more scandalous) to contemporary philosophers than to count the opinions which have been emitted for and against a maxim, in order to find out whether we ought to shape our conduct by it or not.
Professor Durkheim said recently, at the Société française de philosophie (February 11, 1906), that it would be impossible to suppress the religious element in ethics, and that what characterised this element was its incommensurability with other human values. He recognised that his sociological researches led him to conclusions very near those of Kant; he asserted that utilitarian morality had misunderstood the problem of duty and obligation. I do not want to discuss these here; I simply cite them to show to what point the character of the sublime impresses itself on authors who, by the nature of their work, would seem the least inclined to accept it.
No writer has defined more forcibly than Proudhon
