THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 115
and the synthesis. As to those who are not acquainted with Hegelian language, we would say to them in the sacramental formula, affirmation, negation, and negation of the negation. That is what it means to speak in this way. It is certainly not Hebrew, so as not to displease 'M. Proudhon; but it is the language of this reason so pure, separated from the individual. Instead of the ordinary individual, with his ordinary manner of speak- ing and thinking, we have nothing but this ordinary manner pure and simple, minus the individual.
Is there occasion to be surprised that everything, in the final abstraction, because it is abstraction and not analysis, presents itself in the state of logical category Is there need to be astonished that in casting down little by little all which constitutes the individuality of a house, that in making abstraction of the materials of which it is composed, of the form which distinguishes it, you would come to have nothing but a body—that in making abstraction of the limits of this body you would very soon have nothing but an empty space—that, finally, in making abstraction of the dimensions of this space you would finish by having nothing more than quantity pure and simple, the logical category? In consequence of thus abstracting all the so-called accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction we have as substance the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians who imagine that in making these abstractions they make an analysis, and who in proportion as they detach more and more from certain objects imagine that they approach the point of penetrating them, these metaphysicians have in their turn the right to say that the things of this earth are em- broideries of which the logical categories form the canvas. That is what distinguishes the philosopher from
