Having no knowledge of the German language, he could not have
read the works of Hegel, which at that time had not been
translated into French. It was Charles Grun, a German, who had
come to France to study the various philosophical and socialistic
systems, who gave him the substance of the Hegelian ideas.
During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grun had some long
conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively,
not the ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin
thinker, but the form of the important work on which he labored
after 1843, and which was published in 1846 by Guillaumin.

Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he
demonstrates with wonderful ability in the "System of Economical
Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence
of two laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is
possible, not only with two different things, but with one and
the same thing. Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law
or tendency which created them, all the economical categories are
rational,--competition, monopoly, the balance of trade, and
property, as well as the division of labor, machinery, taxation,
and credit. But, like communism and population, all
these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not only to
each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder
is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of
the work,--"Philosophy of Misery." No category can be
suppressed; the opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance, which
exists in each of them, cannot be suppressed.

Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced
by the Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a