Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/60

these various forms are incompatible with each other, or if by accident they are united, they invariably lose, by being so, many of their essential properties. A monarchy cannot exist in conjunction with an oligarchy or an aristocracy, without the first losing much that naturally appertains to absolutism, nor can the second exist without a loss of power. A monarchy, an oligarchy, and an aristocracy cannot coexist with a democracy, without the latter losing its exclusive and absorbing character, as an aristocracy loses its power, an oligarchy its aggressive tendencies, a monarchy its absolutism. Their reciprocal relations cause their common annihilation. It is only in that supernatural society, the Church, that we find all these forms harmoniously combined without any diminution of their original purity and their primitive grandeur. This pacific combination of antagonistic forces, and of forms of government whose only law, humanly speaking, is to oppose each other, presents the most beautiful spectacle the world can offer. If the government of the Church could be defined, we might define it as an immense aristocracy that wields an oligarchic power, which is placed in the hands of an absolute king, whose peculiar function is to offer himself perpetually as a holocaust for the salvation of his people. This would indeed be the most surprising of definitions, as that which it defines is the greatest marvel of history!

To briefly recapitulate what has been said, we may venture to assert, without fear of being contradicted by facts, that through Catholicism all things have been regulated and made harmonious. This order and harmony as regards man, proves that Catholicism has subjected the passions to the will, the will to the understanding, the understanding to reason, reason to faith,