Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/194

impossible, because, either man ought not to think of self-reformation, or revolutions ought not to take place; for, if unreformed men assume the office of revolutionists, then political ruin is only the prelude to social ruin; while if men, in place of undertaking to overthrow the state, would attempt to reform themselves, then neither social nor political ruin would be possible. Thus, in either case, the liberal school is compelled to yield to the conclusions of the socialist or to those of the Catholic schools.

Consequently, the socialist schools have logic and reason on their side, in maintaining against the liberal school that, if evil exists essentially in society or in the state, the only remedy is the overthrow of society or the state; and, according to this hypothesis, it is neither necessary nor proper, but, on the contrary, it is pernicious and absurd to attempt to reform man.

If we adopt the theory of the innate and absolute goodness of man, then he is the universal reformer, and in no need of being himself reformed. This view transforms man into God, and he ceases to have a human nature and becomes divine. Being in himself absolute goodness, the effect produced by the revolutions he creates must be absolute good; and as the chief good, and cause of all good, man must therefore be most excellent, most wise, and most powerful. Adoration is so imperative a necessity for man, that we find the socialists, who are atheists, and as such refusing to adore God, making gods of men, and in this way inventing a new form of adoration.

These being the dominant ideas of the socialist schools with regard to man, it is evident that socialism denies his antithetical nature as a pure invention of the Cath-