Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/173

The socialist schools, considered theoretically, as they appear in the writings of their doctors and masters, and apart from the vulgar who follow them, possess great advantages over the liberal school, precisely because they approach directly all great problems and questions, and always give a peremptory and decisive solution. The strength of socialism consists in its being a system of theology, and it is destructive only because it is a satanic theology.

The socialist schools, as they are theological, will prevail over the liberal, because the latter are antitheological and skeptical. But they themselves, on account of their satanic element, will be vanquished by the Catholic school, which is at the same time theological and divine. The instincts of socialism would seem to agree with our affirmations, since it hates Catholicism, while it simply despises liberalism.

Democratic socialism has reason to ask liberalism: “What manner of God is this that you propose to my adoration, who must assuredly be inferior to you, since he has neither will, nor even a personality? I deny the existence of a Catholic God; but while I deny it, I can conceive it. That which I cannot imagine, is a God without the divine attributes. Everything inclines me to believe that, if you admit the existence of God, it is in order that you may receive through him the legitimacy which you do not of yourself possess. Your legitimacy and your existence are a fiction based ‘upon a fiction, and a shadow resting on a shadow. My mission is to dissipate all shadows, and to put an end to fictions. The distinction between the actual and the constituent authority has every appearance of being invented by those who, not daring to claim both, desire