PROUDHON (Pierre-Joseph.) - Lot 260

PROUDHON (Pierre-Joseph.) PROUDHON (Pierre-Joseph). Born in Besançon. 1809–1865. French philosopher and sociologist. He popularized the phrase “Property is theft,” which appears in *What Is Property?*. P.A.S. “P. J. Proudhon.” No place, no date. 1 page 1/3, in-8 format (thinning, remnants of adhesive on the spine, and a center fold). PROUDHON ATTACKS THE AUTHOR OF *L’UNITÉIDE*, PAULIN GAGNE, ON THE SUBJECT OF FAITH… Mr. Gagne, the mystical candidate, author of *L’Unitéide* and other mystagogical and verse-based volumes, exchanged a brief correspondence with Proudhon; he had written to the philosopher that he had had a vision in which he was presented to himself as destined to be a new St. Paul and the greatest defender of religion… Proudhon replied: …“Sir, I can only be flattered by the things you tell me (…); but the very fervor of your faith must make you understand that I cannot make up my mind based on mere confidences from a pious soul. My actions depend, as you yourself say, on a higher order. Now, just as St. Paul—to whom you dare to compare me and whose apostolate you promise me—could not, before his miraculous conversion, declare himself for Christ and his church, so too I can do nothing for the faith as long as I remain confined within my rationalism, and I have not yet received the spark that must change my conviction and my will...An anticlerical, Proudhon sought the abolition of all forms of ecclesiastical thought and organization. Etienne Paulin Gagne (1808–1876) was a lawyer, journalist, and poet, author of *L’Unitéide*, a poem of 25,000 lines in which one “encounters the most bizarre jumble of fantastical names and absurd verses that the human mind could invent.” He was a “universal, perpetual, supernatural, and irremovable candidate” in every election and is counted among the literary madmen.