Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/132

the Catholic dogma, not having a real but a negative existence, cannot serve as material for a new creation, and consequently the difficulty which would arise from the coexistence of two diverse and simultaneous creations, 1s avoided. This difficulty would increase at every step of our examination, if we accepted the supposition of a dualism in creation. For, this hypothesis admitted, it would forcibly imply another dualism much more repugnant to human reason, that of an essential dualism in the divinity, whom we must either suppose to be a simple essence, or we cannot conceive at all. This divine dualism involves the idea of a rivalry, which would be at the same time necessary and impossible; necessary, because two Gods who are antagonistic, and two essences that are repugnant to each other, are condemned, by the very nature of things, to an incessant struggle; and impossible, because a definitive victory is the final object of every contest; and this definitive victory would be either in the suppression of evil for good, or of good for evil; and yet neither can be suppressed, because they both exist in an essential, and therefore in a necessary manner. I From the impossibility of suppression follows the impossibility of victory, which is the final object of all disputes, and therefore the radical impossibility of the dispute itself. The contradiction that exists in every system of Manicheism, as applied to the divinity, also exists as applied to man, in whom we cannot suppose the substantial coexistence of good and evil. This contradiction 1s absurd, and therefore inconceivable. To affirm of man that he is at the same time essentially good and essentially evil, is equivalent to the assertion of one of these two things: either, that man is a unit, formed of two opposite natures, and