Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/891

Rh P K O P R 867 Personally Proudhon was one of the most remarkable figures of modern France. His life was marked by the severest simplicity and even Puritanism ; he was affectionate in his domestic relations, a most loyal friend, and strictly Upright in conduct. He was strongly opposed to the prevailing French socialism of his time because of its utopianism and immorality ; and, though he uttered all manner of wild paradox and vehement invective against the dominant ideas and institutions, he Was remarkably free from feel ings of personal hate. In all that he said and did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual social and academic discipline ; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness, and his exaggera tions ; but he is always vigorous, and often brilliant and original. It would of course be impossible to reduce the ideas of such an irregular thinker to systematic form. In later years Proudhon him self confessed that the great part of his publications formed only a work of dissection and ventilation, so to speak, by means of which he slowly makes his way towards a superior conception of political and economic laws.&quot; Yet the groundwork of his teaching is clear and firm ; no one could insist with greater emphasis on the demonstrative character of economic principles as understood by himself. He strongly believed in the absolute truth of a few moral ideas, with which it was the aim of his teaching to mould and suffuse political economy. Of these fundamental ideas, justice, liberty, and equality were the chief. &quot;What he desiderated, for instance, in an ideal society was the most perfect equality of remuneration. It was his principle that service pays service, that a day s labour balances a day s labour in other words, that the duration of labour is the just measure of value. He did not shrink from any of the consequences of this theory, for he would give the same remuneration to the worst mason as to a Phidias ; but he looks forward also to a period in human development when the present inequality in the talent and capacity of men would be reduced to an inappreciable minimum. From the great principle of service as the equivalent of service is derived his axiom that property is the right of aubaine. The aubain was a stranger not naturalized ; and the right of aubaine was the right in virtue of which the sovereign claimed the goods of such a stranger who had died in his territory. Property is a right of the same nature, with a like power of appro priation in the form of rent, interest, &c. It reaps without labour, consumes without producing, and enjoys without exertion. Proudhon s aim, therefore, was to realize a science of society resting on principles of justice, liberty, and equality thus understood ; &quot;a science absolute, rigorous, based on the nature of man and of his faculties, and on their mutual relations ; a science which we have not to invent, but to discover.&quot; But he saw clearly that such ideas with their necessary accompaniments could only be realized through a long and laborious process of social transformation. As we have said, he strongly detested the prurient immorality of the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. He attacked them not less bitterly for thinking that society could be changed off-hand by a ready-made and complete scheme of reform. It was &quot;the most accursed lie,&quot; he said, &quot;that could be offered to mankind.&quot; In social change he distinguishes between the transition and the per fection or achievement. With regard to the transition he advocated the progressive abolition of the right of aubaine, by reducing interest, rent, &c. For the goal he professed only to give the general principles ; he had no ready-made scheme, no Utopia. The positive organization of the new society in its details was a labour that would require fifty Montesquieus. The organization he desired was one on collective principles, a free association which would take account of the division of labour, and which would maintain the personality both of the man and the citizen. With his strong and fervid feeling for human dignity and liberty, Proudhon could not have tolerated any theory of social change that did not give full scope for the free development of man. Connected with this was his famous paradox of anarchy, as the goal of the free development of society, by which he meant that through the ethical progress of men government should become unnecessary. &quot;Government of man by man in every form, &quot; he says, &quot;is oppression. The highest perfection of society is found in the union of order and anarchy.&quot; Proudhon s theory of property as the right of aubaine is substan tially the same as the theory of capital held by Marx and most of the later socialists. Property and capital are defined and treated as the power of exploiting the labour of other men, of claiming the results of labour without giving an equivalent. Proudhon s famous paradox, &quot;Lapropriete, c estle vol,&quot; is merely a trenchant expression of this general principle. As slavery is assassination inasmuch as it destroys all that is valuable and desirable in human personality, so property is theft inasmuch as it appropriates the value produced by the labour of others in the form of rent, interest, or profit without rendering an equivalent. For property Proudhon would substitute individual possession, the right of occupation being equal for all men (see SOCIALISM). The principal works of Proudhon have already been mentioned. A complete edition, including his posthumous writings, was published at Paris, 1875. See P. J, Proudhon, so, vie el sa correspondance, by Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1875), an admirable work, unhappily not completed; also Revue des Deux Mondes. Jan. I860 and Feb. 187-3. (T. K.) PROUT, SAMUEL (1783-1852), water-colour painter, was born at Plymouth on September 17, 1783. His education in art was obtained by a patient and enthusi astic study of nature. He spent whole summer days, in company with the ill-fated Haydon, in drawing the quiet cottages, rustic bridges, and romantic water-mills of the beautiful valleys of Devon. He even made a journey through Cornwall, to try his hand in furnishing sketches for Britton s Beauties of England. On his removal in 1803 to London, which became his headquarters after 1812, a new scene of activity opened up before Prout. He now endeavoured to correct and improve his style by the study of the works of the rising school of land scape. To gain a living he painted marine pieces for Falser the printseller, received pupils, and published many drawing books for learners. He was likewise one of the first who turned to account in his profession the newly-invented art of lithography. In spite of all this industry, however, it was not until about, 1818 that Prout discovered his proper sphere. Happening at that time to make his first visit to the Continent, and to study the quaint streets and market-places of Continental cities, he suddenly found himself in a new and enchanting province of art. All his faculties, having found their congenial element, sprung into unwonted power and activity. His eye readily caught the picturesque features of the architec ture, and his hand recorded them with unsurpassed felicity and fine selection of line. The composition of his draw ings was exquisitely natural ; their colour exhibited &quot; the truest and happiest association in sun and shade&quot;; the picturesque remnants of ancient architecture were rendered with the happiest breadth and largeness, with the heartiest perception and enjoyment of their time-worn ruggedness ; and the solemnity of great cathedrals was brought out with striking effect. Encouraged by this success, Prout continued most enthusiastically to pursue that path upon which he had unexpectedly come. At the time of his death, 10th February 1852, there was scarcely a nook in France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands where his quiet, benevolent, observant face had not been seen search ing for antique gables and sculptured pieces of stone. In Venice especially there was hardly a pillar which his eye had not lovingly studied and his pencil had not dexter ously copied. See a memoir of Prout, by John Paiskin, in Art Journal for 1849, and the same author s Notes on the Fine Art Society s Loan Col lection of Drawings by Samuel Prout and William Hunt, 1879-80. PROVEN9AL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. I. LANGUAGE. Prove^al is a name used to comprehend all the varieties of Romanic speech formerly spoken and written, and still generally used by country people, in the south of France. The geographical limits of this infinitely varied idiom cannot be defined with precision, because it is conterminous on the north, south, and east with idioms of the same family, with which almost at every point it blends by insensible gradations. Roughly speaking, it may be said to be contained between the Atlantic on the west, the Pyrenees and Mediterranean on the south, and the Alps on the east, and to be bounded on the north by a line pro ceeding from the Gironde to the Alps, and passing through the departments of Gironde, Dordogne, Haute Vienne, Creuse, Allier, Loire, Rhone, Isere, and Savoie. These limits are to some extent conventional. True, they are fixed in accordance with the mean of linguistic characters ; but it is self-evident that according to the importance attached to one character or another they may be deter mined differently. 1. Different Names. Though the name Provencal is generally adopted to designate the Romanic idiom of this region, it must not be supposed that this name has been