the principal method of mathematical demonstration. In social
economy, it is not the same: thus we see, for example, that
property being proved by its results to be false, the opposite
formula, communism, is none the truer on this account, but is
deniable at the same time and by the same title as property.
Does it follow, as has been said with such ridiculous emphasis,
that every truth, every idea, results from a contradiction,--
that is, from a something which is affirmed and denied at the
same moment and from the same point of view,--and that it may be
necessary to abandon wholly the old-fashioned logic, which
regards contradiction as the infallible sign of error? This
babble is worthy of sophists who, destitute of faith and honesty,
endeavor to perpetuate scepticism in order to maintain their
impertinent uselessness. Because antinomy, immediately it is
misunderstood, leads inevitably to contradiction, these have been
mistaken for each other, especially among the French, who like to
judge everything by its effects. But neither contradiction nor
antinomy, which analysis discovers at the bottom of every simple
idea, is the principle of truth. Contradiction is always
synonymous with nullity; as for antinomy, sometimes called by
the same name, it is indeed the forerunner of truth, the material
of which, so to speak, it supplies; but it is not truth, and,
considered in itself, it is the efficient cause of disorder, the
characteristic form of delusion and evil.

An antinomy is made up of two terms, necessary to each other, but
always opposed, and tending to mutual destruction. I hardly dare
to add, as I must, that the first of these terms has received the
name thesis, position, and the second the name anti-thesis,
counter-position. This method of thought is now so well-known