THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 131
peasants into responsible and equal workmen, and you will have made a substitution of ends and of persons quite worthy of this Providence, which in Scotland established landlordism in order to give itself the malign pleasure of substituting sheep for men.
But since M. Proudhon takes so tender an interest in Providence we will refer him to “The History of Political Economy” of M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, who also runs after a providential end. This end is no longer equality but catholicism.
Seventh and Last Observation.
The economists have a singular manner of proceeding. There are for them only two kinds of institutions, those of art and those of nature. Feudal institutions are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who also establish two kinds of religion. Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is an emanation from God. In saying that existing con- ditions—the conditions of bourgeois production—are natural, the economists give it to be understood that these are the relations in which wealth is created and the pro- ductive forces are developed conformably to the laws of nature. Thus these relations are themselves natural laws, independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there have been feudal institutions, and in these feudal institutions were found conditions of pro- duction entirely different to those of bourgeois society, which the economists wish to have accepted as being natural and therefore eternal,
