Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/175

whose reply was, ‘Begone, Satan!” which put an end at once to the temptation and to the diabolical illusions. It must be confessed that the Catholics have a special gift of exhibiting great truths in a clear light, and presenting them under the form of ingenious fictions. All antiquity would have condemned the stupidity of any man who would publicly discuss at the same time things human and divine, religious and social institutions, the authorities and the gods. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would have united in passing a sentence of condemnation against such a person, and the cynics and sophists would have been his only champions.

“As regards evil, it either exists throughout creation or not at all. Forms of government have little power to produce it. If society is sound and well constituted, it is capable of resisting all possible forms of government. If it cannot do this, it is because it is badly constituted and diseased. We cannot conceive evil, save as an organic vice of society, or as a radical vice of human nature, and In this case the remedy is not to change the government, but to alter the social organism or the constitution of man.”

The fundamental error of liberalism is, that it considers questions of government as alone important, when they are in reality of no consequence whatever, compared to those of religious and social order. This helps to explain why liberalism is always and everywhere entirely eclipsed, from the moment that Catholics and socialists announce their tremendous problems and their contradictory solutions. When Catholicism affirms that evil comes from sin, that sin in the first man corrupted human nature, yet, nevertheless, good prevails over evil, and order over disorder, because the one is human and