Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/55

so immense, men live grouped together, in obedience to the impulsion of their most noble affinities. These groups are connected one with the other, and all are united in a more general and comprehensive body, and move in submission to the law of a sovereign harmony. The child is born, and lives in the domestic association, which is the divine foundation of human associations. Families are grouped among themselves in conformity with the law of their origin, and, assembled in this manner, they form superior groups, which are called classes. The different classes have each their particular functions. Some cultivate the arts of peace, others those of war; some acquire glory, others administer justice; while others are devoted to industrial pursuits. Out of these natural groups others spontaneously arise, composed of those who seek glory by the same path, those who are devoted to the same industrial avocations, and those who have the same professions. These various groups are arranged in classes, and all these classes, hierarchically arranged among themselves, constitute the State, a vast association, of sufficient amplitude for all. This is the social point of view.

Considered in a political aspect, families are associated into various groups; each group of families constitutes a municipality, and each municipality is, for the families that compose it, a participation in common in the right of worshiping God, administering their own goods, providing nourishment for the living, and burial for the dead. For this reason each municipality has its temple, the symbol of its religious unity; a municipal hall, the symbol of its administrative unity; its territory, the symbol of its jurisdictional and civil unity; and its cemetery, the symbol of its right of sepulture.