Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/193

where it has its center and origin. From which we see that the Catholic and rationalist theories are not only utterly incompatible, but likewise antagonistic. All subversion, whether it be in the political or social order, is condemned by the Catholic theory as foolish and useless. The rationalist theories condemn all moral reform in man as stupid and of no avail. And thus, the ones as well as the others are consistent in their condemnation; because, if evil neither exists in the state nor in society, why and wherefore require the overthrow of society and of the state? And, on the contrary, if evil neither exists in individuals nor proceeds from them, why and for what cause desire the interior reformation of man?

The socialist schools accept, without difficulty, the question proposed in this manner; but the liberal school, not without grave reason, finds serious inconvenience in accepting it. In meeting the question as it presents itself naturally, the liberal school would be compelled to deny, with a radical negation, the Catholic theory, both in itself and in all its consequences; and this is what it resolutely refuses to do. Adopting, at the same time, all principles and all their counter-principles, it does not wish to renounce either the one or the other, but is forever occupied in the attempt to reconcile all contradictory theories and human inconsistencies. According to this school moral reforms are not bad, although it views political revolutions as most salutary, without perceiving that these two things are incompatible, because men who are interiorly purified cannot become the agents of subversion; and such agents, by the very act of their being such, declare that they are not interiorly purified. In this matter, as in all others, a middle ground between Catholicism and socialism is altogether