Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/279

only exists in the present. But, according to this supposition, his existence is rather phenomenal than real. If he does not exist in the past, because it is past, andnthere is no connection between the past and the present; if he does not live in the future because the future is not, and when the future shall exist, what now constitutes the present will have ceased to be: if man only lives in the present, and the present does not exist, because when we would affirm its existence it is already past, it results from this, that man's existence is rather theoretical than real, because if he does not really exist throughout all time, he does not exist in any portion of time whatever. I can only conceive of time as united under its three forms, and I cannot conceive of it if they are separated. What is the past, except that which no longer exists? What is the future, except that which does not yet exist? And who can arrest the present, the necessary time to affirm it, before it reaches the future and falls into the past? Therefore, to affirm the existence of man and to deny the unity of time, is to give to man only the speculative existence of the mathematical point. Therefore, the negation of sin ends in nihilism, either as regards the existence of individual man, of humanity, of the family, or of society; and it is proved that all the socialist doctrines, or to speak with more precision, all the rationalist doctrines, end in nothingness. There is nothing more natural or logical, if we carefully reflect upon it, than that those who separate themselves from God should end in nihilism, because out of God there is only nothingness.

This established, I can with justice accuse the socialism of the present day of timidity, and of being contradictory. It denies the triune and one God, and affirms