of futile
curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he
replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes
in writing; for, as he remarks, 'if there be some points which
correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by
conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the
case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed,
which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than
ten hours of oral intercourse!' In writing to you he does not hesitate
to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and
superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself
defeated--it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the
breaks, the variations, in short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history
of his mind is in his letters; there it must be sought.

"Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the page
of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and
that without losing patience, without getting confused, without
sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public man, devoted to the
propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him,
is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold,
uniform, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste,
no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to chance;
the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided,
indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the
chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business
and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the
letters of his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace.

"But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he does
not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in
reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet
from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he
discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to
him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly
search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially
from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in
the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an
impression of moral esteem and almost of intell