A PERSONAL PREFACE
TO THE THIRD EDITIONJust before I began this introduction to the new— third— edition
of my biography of Proudhon, I came across a salutary statement
by the subject of it. ‘I distrust an author who pretends to be
consistent with himself after an interval of twenty-five years. ’ Proudhon,
of course, took a pride in inconsistency, which he saw as the only
way of dealing with the mutability of our perceptions of the world,
just as he proudly called himself ‘a man of paradox,’ but his remark
was true to the extent that the only living thought is that which
has retained its power to change.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was originally published thirty-one years
ago, and I began writing it thirty-five years ago, so that it takes
me even farther back in my career than Proudhon’s quarter of a
century. It was by no means my first book, but I have always
regarded it as the end of my literary apprenticeship, the mature
book with which I became— if not a master— at least an accomplished
journeyman. And it is still my favourite, apart from poetry, among
my earlier books.
Since I wrote it, my ideas, like those of Proudhon, have gone
through many modifications. Even at the time when it was written
I was undergoing radical changes of attitude. Before I decided to