means of escape from this
_impasse_! Assuredly! We have only to follow the example of Kant. We
have only to ask ourselves whence comes this idea of authority, of
government? We have only to get all the information we can upon the
legitimacy of the political idea. Once safe on this ground and the
question solves itself with extraordinary ease.

"Like religion, government is a manifestation of social spontaneity, a
preparation of humanity for a higher condition."

"What humanity seeks in religion and calls God, is itself." "What the
citizen seeks in Government and calls king, emperor, or president, is
again himself, is liberty." "Outside humanity there is no God; the
theological concept has no meaning:--outside liberty no government, the
political concept has no value."

So much for the "biography" of the political idea. Once grasped it must
enlighten us upon the question as to which is the best form of
government.

"The best form of government, like the most perfect of religions, taken
in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to
discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free.
Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,--this is the only reality
of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous
with order, be brought about? We shall be taught this by the analysis of
the various formulas of authority. For all the rest we no more admit the
governing of man by man than the exploitation of man by man."[16]

We have now climbed to the topmost heights of Proudhon's political
philosophy. It is from this that the fresh and vivifying stream of his
Anarchist thought flows. Before we follow the somewhat tortuous course
of this stream let us glance back at the way we have climbed.

We fancied we were following Kant. We were mistaken. In his "Critique of
Pure Reason" Kant has demonstrated the impossibility of proving the
existence of God, because everything outside experience must escape us
absolutely. In his "Critique of Practical Reason" Kant admitted the
existence of God in the name of morality. But he has never declared that
God was a topsy-turvy image of our own soul. What Proudhon attributes to
Kant, indubitably belongs to Feuerbach. Thus it is in the footsteps of
the latter that we have been treading, while roughly tracing out the
"biography" of the political Idea. So that Proudhon brings us back to
the very starting point of our most unsentimental jou