French literature o f the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
Montaigne, Rabelais, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and to under
stand the methods of philosophical thought. Fallot’s restraining
influence was eminently beneficial to the impetuous, idea-
intoxicated Proudhon. ‘Hold your mind long on the same sub
ject,’ urged the older man. ‘Become permeated with a science,
whatever it may be, or with a book or an author... .’ It was
excellent and timely advice, and there is no doubt that through
Fallot’s influence Proudhon began the difficult process of dis
ciplining his thought that preceded his first appearance as an
author. He was never a systematic thinker in the strict sense, but
in all his works there is a strong organic pattern, which arose
from the combination of his natural dynamism with the method
and premeditation he acquired from Fallot.
The political disturbances o f 1830 troubled the fortunes o f the
two friends, and temporarily parted them. Fallot went to Paris in
search of employment, while Proudhon began to suffer from the
prevalent depression in the printing trade. In September, 1830,
he received his certificate book as a journeyman compositor, but
after that followed an interval of unemployment and poverty,
until he was reduced to selling his college prizes— the only library
he owned. He left Besanfon and even went outside the printing
trade to find work, and early in 18 31 he tried his hand as a teacher
in the college of Gray, a small town north-west of Besangon.
Whether from discontent or unsuitableness for a pedagogic em
ployment, he stayed there only from Shrove Tuesday until the
middle of Lent, and then decided to try his fortune abroad. On
G ood Friday he set out on foot through the Jura into Switzer
land, where he found employment in Neufchatel and stayed for
half a year, an unhappy exile during which he conceived an active
dislike of the Swiss. In November he returned to Besan£on and
to printing.
Such a migrant existence gave Proudhon neither the time nor
the means to continue his studies, but he might have become
resigned to this had it not been for the exhortations of Fallot, who
had conceived the highest opinion of his friend’s abilities. ‘Here
is my prediction,’ he assured him in an extraordinary letter written
at the end o f 1831. ‘You, Proudhon, will inevitably, despite your
self and by the fact of your destiny, be a writer, an author. You
will be a philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the epoch,
THE HILLS OF THE JURAD