had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of conditions; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and an impossibility: that equality alone can revive this ancient and mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not meet with your approbation, since, without denying the relation pointed out by the competitor, you judged, and rightly gentlemen, that the principle of equality of conditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author were nothing more than hypotheses.
“Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental principle of equality you presented for competition in the following terms: The economical and moral consequences in France up to the present time, and those which seem likely to appear in future, of the law concerning the equal division of hereditary property between the children.
“Instead of confining one to common places without breadth or significance, it seems to me that your question should be developed as follows:—
“If the law has been able to render the right of heredity common to all the children of one father, can it not render it equal for all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
“If the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family, can it not, by the right of heredity, cease to heed it in the race, in the tribe, in the nation?
“Can equality, by the right of succession, be preserved between citizens, as well as between cousins and brothers? In a word, can the principle of succession become a principle of equality?
“To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question: What is the principle of heredity? What are the foundations of inequality? What is property?
“Such, gentlemen, is the object of the memoir that I offer you to day.
“If I have rightly grasped the object of your thought; if I succeed in bringing to light a truth which is indisputable, but, from causes which I am bold enough to claim to have explained, has always been misunderstood; if by an infallible method of investigation, I establish the dogma of equality of conditions; if I determine the principle of civil law, the essence of justice, and the form of society; if I annihilate property forever,—to you, gentlemen, will redound all the glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it.
“My purpose in this work is the application of method to the problems of philosophy; every other intention is foreign to and even abusive of it.
