116 THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY
the Christian. The Christian has but one incarnation of the Logos, in spite of logic; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations. That all which exists, that all which lives on land and in water, may, by force of ab- straction, be reduced to a logical category; that in this fashion the whole of the real world may be drowned in the world of abstractions, in the world of logical categories, who can wonder?
All that exists, all that lives on land and in water, exists, lives, only by some movement. Thus the move- ment of history produces the social relations, the industrial movement gives us the products of in- dustry, &c.
As by the force of abstraction we have transformed everything into a logical category, so we have only to make abstraction of all distinctive character of the different movements in order to arrive at movement in the abstract, movement purely formal, at the purely logical formula of movement. If in the logical categories is found the substance of all things, it might be supposed that in the logical formula of movement would be found the absolute method which not only explains everything, but which further implies the movement of things.
It is of this absolute method that Hegel speaks in these terms: “Method is absolute force, unique, supreme, infinite, which no object can resist; it is the tendency of reason to find itself, to recognise itself, in everything.” (“Logic,” vol. III.) Everything being reduced to a logical category, and every movement, every act of pro- duction, to method, it naturally follows that all masses of products and of production, of objects and of movement, are reduced to an applied metaphysic. What Hegel has done for religion, right, &c., M. Proudhon seeks to do for political economy.
