Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/320

called humanity; and the inferior city where they command is here called Paris, and there Athens or Rome.

Now, as these inferior civic bodies are condensed, so to speak, in one person in whom their perfections and virtues reside in a special manner, it was also fitting that this universal law of typical personification should be accomplished with regard to that superior collective body whose name is humanity. The excellencies of that city surpassing all others, demanded a superior personification to all other personifications, because it was the highest, most excellent and perfect of all. Nor was this alone sufficient; it was requisite, for the entire accomplishment of the law, that the person in whom humanity was condensed should combine in the unity of his person two different natures: by the one he should be man, and by the other he should be God, for God alone is superior to man. Nor can it be said that the incarnation of an angel would have sufficed for the fulfillment of this law, because it must be considered that man being composed of a spiritual essence and a corporeal nature, participates of both the physical and angelic natures. Man represents the confluence of all created things. If we take this for granted, it is evident that the person who was thus to condense in himself human nature, must also condense in himself all creation; from which it follows, that being through humanity all that is created, he must, in order to become at the same time something more, be also God. Finally, it was necessary for the full accomplishment of the law that we have just explained, that the same person who exercised absolute command in the inferior city, should be as a citizen and nothing more in the more perfect city. This is why God made