Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/209

it is the supreme affirmation, and that nothing but an absolute negation can be opposed to it.

In this way is the question defined between rationalists and Catholics. Man is sovereignly free, and being free he can accept either purely Catholic or purely rationalist solutions; he may affirm all or deny all; he may either save himself or lose himself; but what man cannot do is to change the immutable nature of things by his will. Nor can he find peace in eclecticism, either socialist or liberalist. To have the right of denying anything, socialists and liberals are obliged to deny all. Catholicism, humanly considered, is only great because it is the combination of all possible affirmations; and if liberalism and socialism are feeble, it is because they jumble together various Catholic affirmations and various rationalistic negations; and instead of being schools which contradict Catholicism, they are simply schools differing from it.

The socialists appear bold in their negations only when we compare them with the liberalists, who see in each affirmation a difficulty and in each negation a danger. But the timidity of the socialists strikes us at once if we compare them with the Catholic school. For then we perceive with what confidence the latter affirms, and with what timidity the former deny. What! you call yourselves the apostles of a new gospel, and speak to us about evil and sin, redemption and grace, things which are all found in the old gospel! You claim to be the depositaries of a new political, social, and religious science, and yet speak to us of liberty, equality, and fraternity, things all as old as Catholicism, which is as old as the world! He who has declared that he would exalt the lowly and humble the proud, has fulfilled his