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  commands. ­
  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  anthropomorphic ­
  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  superhuman ­
  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.