Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/235

sublime and more universal dogmas, by which we see how the Creator produced all creatures with weight, number, and measure. Following, then, the exposition of the dogmas respecting the human order, we shall see proceeding from them, as from a most copious source, those general laws of humanity which overwhelm us with astonishment by their wisdom, and surprise us by their grandeur. From the dogma of the concentration of human nature in Adam, united to the dogma of the transmission of this same nature to all men, proceeds, as a consequence from its principle, the dogma of the substantial unity of mankind. The human race being one, ought at the same time to be multiple, in conformity with that law which is the most universal of all laws, and is at the same time physical and moral, human and divine, and in virtue of which all unity engenders plurality, and all plurality resolves itself into unity. Mankind is one by the substance which constitutes it, and it is multiple by the persons who compose it; therefore it is one and multiple at the same time. In the same manner, each one of the individuals who compose humanity, being distinct from the others by that which constitutes his individuality, and blended with others by that which constitutes him an individual of the species, that is to say, by substance, becomes in this way, at the same time one and multiple like the human species. The dogma of actual sin is correlative with the dogma of multiplicity in the species, and the dogmas of original sin and of impu- tation are correlative with the dogma which teaches the substantial unity of mankind; and, as a consequence of both, proceeds the dogma according to which man is subject to a double responsibility-that which is proper