Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/133

in this affirmation the Manichean system would unite what in the divinity it is obliged to separate; or, to assert that the essence of man is one, and that, being one, it is evil and good at the same time, which is at once to affirm and deny of the same thing all that is denied and affirmed of that very thing.

The Catholic system admits the existence of evil, but its existence is modal, not essential. Evil, thus considered, is synonymous with disorder, and, in reality, it is nothing else than the disordered condition of that which is essentially good, and which, by a secret and mysterious cause, has ceased to be properly regulated. But the Catholic system points out to us this secret and mysterious cause, and if, in this indication, there is much that surpasses our reason, there is nothing which contradicts or is repugnant to it. It is not necessary to have recourse to a divine intervention, in order to explain a modal perturbation in things which, after this disturbance, preserve their essence pure and intact; in such an explanation there would be no proportion between the effect and its cause. This fact is sufficiently explained by the anarchical intervention of free and intelligent beings; for, if these beings could not in any way alter the marvelous order and concerted harmony of creation, they could not be regarded as free or intelligent. Evil, then, is accidental and ephemeral in its nature, and as such we may affirm of it, without contradiction or inconsistency, these two things: first, that evil cannot in any way be a work of God; second, that whatever is accidental and ephemeral must be the work of man. In this way the affirmations of reason blend with the affirmations of Catholicism. According to the Catholic system, all absurdities disappear and all contradic-