Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/54

existence of a great and barbarous civilization; the Grecian statues and temples exhibit a graceful, ephemeral, and brilliant cultivation; the Roman monuments show that a great nation created them; but the cathedral, in which is united so great majesty to so great beauty, so much grandeur to so much taste, such grace joined to such surpassing loveliness, unity so severe to so rich a variety, such a combination of moderation and boldness, such mellowness of tint and roundness of outline to such marvelous harmony between silence and light, shadows and colors,—this spectacle exhibits the most astonishing of civilizations and the greatest people of history; a people who combine the Egyptian grandeur, Grecian brilliancy, and Roman strength; and, added to all these, that which is beyond all strength, brilliancy and grandeur, the immortal and the perfect.

If we pass from the contemplation of the sciences, letters, and the arts, to the study of those institutions which the Church animates with her breath, nourishes with her substance, upholds with her spirit, and illumines with her light, we behold a spectacle equally surprising and wonderful. Catholicism, which refers all things to God, and orders all things in reference to God, and thus converts the most entire freedom into a constitutive element of order, and infinite variety into a constitutive element of infinite unity, is, by its very nature, the religion of vigorous associations, which are closely united through sympathetic affinities.

In Catholicism, man never stands alone; so that, in order to find a man severed from all ties, and consigned to that dismal and gloomy solitude where he becomes an embodiment of ignorance and pride, we must go beyond its confines. In the vast circle described by limits