THE EXILE
o f Proudhon’s books was so unclearly written, so permeated by
conflicting trends o f thought, so much affected by feelings of
persona] bitterness, flowering at times into a peculiar belligerence
o f expression. Yet basically his position sprang from a positive
realisation that the orthodox pacifist attitude o f negatively
opposing war was fruitless, since war is a social phenomenon
whose nature must be understood before one can talk of bringing
it to an end.
The reception of War and Peace, both among the socialists, who
prematurely raised the cry that Proudhon had betrayed the cause,
and among the journalists o f the rival political sects, who were
delighted by another opportunity to attack the age’s most uncom
promising individualist, brought about in an acute form the
return o f Proudhon’s sense o f isolation from his time. He began
to brood once again over his situation, and, after six months o f
largely fruitless arguments with his friends and of unmitigatingly
harsh and hostile interpretations on the part of his enemies, he
had reached the state o f mind when he could write to Gouvernet
at the end of 1861: ‘More than ever I ask myself whether I am of
this world, whether I count in it, or whether I should consider
myself a lost spirit who returns to scare the living and to whom the
living refuse their prayers.’ There was, of course, another side of
his character that throve on such isolation, and nothing is more
typical o f the man than the fact that, in the same letter, he could
also declare defiantly: ‘We are the Revolution: it is annoying that
this sacramental word should have been misused, but it is for us
to give it the true meaning.’
9
On the 12th December, i860, Napoleon III finally issued the
pardon which Proudhon had expected a year before. The recipient
viewed it with mingled pleasure and suspicion. His immediate
impulse was one o f acceptance, and on the 19th December he told
Chaudey that he would return as soon as his affairs and the con
venience o f his household made it possible. But within a few days
his eagerness was dwindling; an amnesty, he realised, did not
mean that he would be able to write freely, and he told Rolland
that he would not return until he had published one or two books
in Paris and French publishers were reassured about his works.
A little later he remarked, with an air of indifference that, so long