Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/136

As the physical and the moral degradation proceed from the same cause, they both present surprising analogies and correspondencies in their various manifestations.

We have already said that sin, the primitive cause of all degradation, was nothing else than disorder; and as order consisted in the perfect equilibrium of all things. created, and this equilibrium in their hierarchical subordination to each other, and in the absolute subjection of all to their Creator, it follows that sin, or disorder, which is the same thing, was nothing else than the weakening of this hierarchical order of things, and of their absolute subjection to the Supreme Being. Or what is the same, sin consisted in the interruption of that perfect equilibrium and marvelous connection in which all things had been placed.

And as effects must always be analogous to their causes, the result produced by the fall was, to a certain point, like the fall itself; that is, disorder, disunion, and a disequilibrium.

Sin was the disunion of man and God.

Sin produced both a moral and a physical disorder.

The moral disorder consisted in the ignorance of the understanding and the weakness of the will.

This ignorance of the understanding was caused by its disunion from the divine mind. The weakness of the will was caused by its disunion from the supreme will.

The physical disorder produced by sin consisted in sickness and death; so that sickness is only disorder, disunion, and disequilibrium of the constitutive parts of our body.