COLLECTIVISM AND LAND NATIONALIZATION. 2$]
Every individual on attaining majority is to be given a portion
to enable him to work independently and exclusively for his
own profit ; but will not this portion, paid probably in money,
be foolishly spent, to the injury of the young generation and
of the whole community? If Collectivism is to be anything
more than land nationalization, and if it is to be applied to
manufacture, it assumes the success of co-operative societies
in winning the business of manufacture from the capitalist
régime. But in that case the difficulties already pointed out
in analyzing Lassalle’s projects of reform will inevitably arise.
In a charming book, entitled Le Règne Social du Christian
isme., François Huet has expressed ideas very similar to those
of the disciples of Colins, but he has borrowed them directly
from the lofty moral teaching of Platonism and Christianity.
This work, every page of which glows with a burning love of
justice, contains a complete theory of society—a sociology
based on Christianity, which has not met with the attention
If deserves, because it is too full of Christianity for Socialists,
and too full of Socialism for Christians.
François Huet was born in 1814, at the town of Villeau,
in Beauce, and died at Paris in 1869. When a pupil at the
Stanislas College he obtained by hard work amid the keenest
competition the most unprecedented success. At the age of
twenty-twa he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Ghent, a post which he retained up to 1850.
He was the disciple of a spiritualist philosopher, a man of
very vigorous intellect, Bordas-Demoulin, and, through him,
of Descartes and Plato. Protesting to the last against Ultra-
montanism and its new dogmas, they were the last Gallicans
of the school of Pascal and Bossuet. About the year 1846
bis philosophical studies led Huet to approach social ques-
fions, as has been the case with most of the philosophers of
nur times : for example, Jules Simon, Janet, Caro, in France ;
Herbert Spencer in England ; Fichte and the followers of
Hegel in Germany ; Rosmini and Mamiani in Italy. At
Ghent, Huet collected around him a group of pupils, among
''’horn was the author of this book, and from before 1848 we
thoroughly studied, each with his own preferences, the various
