Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/24

standing nor deprives them of it. That of the unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions, and sophists are succeeded by hangmen.

He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which governments are amenable; and he possesses soclal truth who comprehends the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God, knows these laws; and he knows God who listens to what He affirms of Himself, and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily resolves itself into a theological truth.

If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated, theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality, which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from