Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/108

fection, by which they are infinitely separated from God, constitutes their relative perfection, by which they perfectly fulfill their different functions, and in this way form the perfect harmony of the universe. Under the point of view we at present consider, the absolute perfection of God consists in his being sovereignly free; that is to say, in having a perfect comprehension of good, and in desiring it with a perfect will. Under this same point of view, the absolute imperfection of all other intelligent and free beings consists in their not understanding or desiring good in such way that they cannot understand evil and desire the evil which their mind conceives. Their relative perfection. consists in this same absolute imperfection, by which on the one hand they differ from God in their nature, and on the other they can unite themselves to God, who is their end, by an effort of their own will, aided by grace.

Intelligent and free beings are disposed in hierarchies, and consequently they are hierarchically imperfect. These beings resemble each other inasmuch as they are all imperfect; but they are distinguished one from the other as to the degree of imperfection, although they are all imperfect in the same manner. The angel only differs from man in that the imperfection which is common to them both is greater in the man and less in the angel, as is suitable to their different positions in the immense scale of existences. They were both, in the beginning, endowed by their Creator with the faculty of understanding and the power to will evil, and to perform that which they understood; and in this was their resemblance. But in the angelical nature this imperfection was brief in its duration, while in human nature it always exists; and in this are they dissimilar.