Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/240

ages, the universal belief of the world; for even after having lost the traces of divine tradition, men have preserved the consciousness of this law of solidarity. If they did not intelligently contemplate this law in all its grandeur, and even when they remained completely ignorant of the depths to which it strikes its roots, and upon what vast foundations it is based, still they recognized it by instinct. The dogma of the unity of the human race being understood only by the people of God, other nations could not have a just idea of the unity and solidarity of humanity; but if they could not apply this law to mankind who were ignorant of it, they proclaimed and even exaggerated its importance in all their political and domestic associations.

The idea of the mysterious transmission by blood, not only of physical qualities, but likewise of other qualities which are exclusively in the soul, of itself suffices to explain almost all the institutions of antiquity—domestic as well as political and social. This idea is identical with that of solidarity; for whatever is transmitted in common to many, constitutes the unity of those to whom it is transmitted, so that to affirm of many that they are in communion with each other, is equivalent to affirming that there exists a solidarity of interests among them. Whenever the idea of the hereditary transmission of physical and moral qualities prevails among a people, their institutions are necessarily aristocratic. For this reason, among all the nations of antiquity in which this idea was exclusive, as applied to certain social groups, it was not modified by what it had that was general and democratic—that is to say, when we apply it to all men, they will constitute themselves aristocratically. The more powerful races subjugated and reduced to servitude