Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/169

Although this school views God as the king of creation, yet it supposes him to remain perpetually and sublimely ignorant of the manner in which his kingdom is governed and conducted; and that when he appointed those who were to govern in his name, he gave them the plenitude of his sovereignty, and declared this gift to be perpetual and inviolable; therefore reverence is due to God from the people, but not obedience.

As to evil, the liberal school denies its existence in physical things, but concedes that it exists in human affairs. In this school, all questions relative to good or evil resolve themselves into questions of government, and all questions respecting government into question of legitimacy; so that the existence of evil is impossible when a government is legitimate, and evil is inevitable when a government is illegitimate; therefore the question of good and evil is reduced to the inquiry, What governments are legitimate and what are illegitimate?

The liberal school calls those governments legitimate which are established by God, and those illegitimate which are not founded on a divinely delegated right. According to it, God has willed that material things should be subject to certain physical laws, which he established from the beginning, once for all; and that societies should be governed by reason, which is incarnated in a general manner In the upper classes, and in a special manner in the philosophers who instruct and direct them; so that it follows, as a necessary consequence, that there are only two legitimate governments, that of human reason, as embodied in a general manner in the middle classes, and in a special manner in the philosophers, and the government of divine reason, as