Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/174

at least to usurp one. The sovereign must be as God; either he is one, or he can have no existence. The sovereignty must be as the Divinity; either it does not exist, or it is indivisible and incommunicable. In the two words, the legitimacy of reason, the last designates the subject, and the first the attribute. I deny both the attribute and the subject. What is legitimacy, and what is reason? And if it is admitted that they mean anything, how do you know whether they are to be found in liberalism and not in socialism, in you and not in me, in the middle classes and not in the people? I deny your legitimacy and you deny mine; you deny my reason and I deny yours. When you provoke me to discussion, I pardon you, because you know not what you do. Discussion, the universal dissolvent, whose secret virtue you do not understand, has destroyed your adversaries, and will destroy yourself. As to me, I am resolved not to tolerate it, for if I do not suppress it, it will turn against me. Discussion is a spiritual sword, which turns the mind with bandaged eyes, and against its power neither dexterity nor an armor of steel avails. Death assumes the guise of discussion when it desires to remain concealed and unrecognized. Rome was too wise to be thus deceived, and when it entered her gates under the mask of a sophist, she saw the disguise, and hastened to dismiss it. According to Catholic doctrine, man fell only because he entered into an argument with the woman, and the woman fell because she listened to the devil; and later, in the midway of time, this same demon, it is said, appeared to Jesus in a desert, and attempted to provoke him to a spiritual contest, or, as we would express it, to a tribunal discussion. But here we find that the devil met a more prudent adversary,