COLLECTIVISM AND LAND NATIONALIZATION. 249 
growth of intellectual power ; but when land is collectively 
appropriated, the wealth of all increases in proportion to the 
activity of each, and to the advance of civilization. 
Colins has also developed some original views on the 
history of communities, which have been reproduced by M. L. 
de Potter in his Dictionnaire Rationnel. 
At the first, the supremacy of brute force is established : 
the father of the family rules, the strongest of the tribe com 
mands. But in a tolerably large community, this kind of 
supremacy can never long endure, for he who is at one time 
the strongest cannot always remain such. What does he do, 
then ? In order to continue master, he converts, as Rousseau 
'’^ys, his strength into a right, and obedience to him into a duty, 
''^ith this object in view, he asserts that there exists an anthro 
pomorphic almighty being, called God ; that God has revealed 
^ules of action, and has appointed him the infallible lawgiver 
and interpreter of this revelation ; that God has endowed every 
^an with an immortal soul ; and, finally, that man will be 
rewarded or punished in a future life, according as he has 
has not regulated his conduct by the revealed law. 
It is not enough, however, for the legislator to assert these 
dogmas ; he must further preserve them from examination, and 
^his is done by maintaining ignorance and repressing thought, 
theocratic sovereignty, or the divine right of kings, is thus 
established, and a feudal aristocracy arises. This is the historic 
period, called by Rational Socialism “ the period of social 
ignorance and of compressibility of examination.” 
After a longer or shorter interval, in consequence of the 
growth of intelligence, the discoveries thereby made, and the 
Increasing facility of communication between nations, it becomes 
impossible to repress all examination entirely. Then the super 
human basis of society is disputed, and its authority falls to 
the ground. The divine right of kings loses its theocratic mask, 
^ud the government is transformed into a mere supremacy of 
force—that is to say, of the majority of the people. Aristocratic 
society becomes bourgeois, and enters upon the historic period 
“ ignorance and incompressibility of examination.” 
Society, then, becomes profoundly agitated and disorganized.