Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/185

prove the profound hatred of God for mankind. God does not aid us through kindness, but because order constitutes his essence. If he seeks the welfare of mankind, it is not because he deems them worthy of benefits, but because he is compelled to do so by the religion of his supreme wisdom. While the vulgar give him the tender appellation of Father, neither the historian nor the political economist can discover any reason to believe in the possibility of our being the objects either of his esteem or of his love.”

These words are a refutation of the manicheism of Proudhon. Man is not the rival, but the despised slave of God; he is neither good nor evil, but a creature governed by those gross and servile instincts which in slaves engender servitude. God is an indescribable combination of severe, inflexible, and mathematical laws. He does good without being good, and his misanthropy shows that he would be evil if his nature permitted it. The Proudhonian God in this bears an evident resemblance to the Fatum of the ancients. Fatalism is still more clearly manifested in the following words:—

“Having arrived at the second station of our Calvary, instead of occupying ourselves with sterile contemplations, it is best for us to attend more closely to the teachings of fate. The pledge of our liberty is altogether in the progress of our punishment.”

After fatalism comes atheism. “What is God? Where is he? How many Gods are there? What does God desire? What is the extent of his power? What promises does he make us? If we undertake to investigate all these things by the light of analysis, all the divinities of earth, heaven, and hell are immediately reduced to I know not what; that is, incorporeal, impos-