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THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY.
they will find there an inexhaustible arsenal. Upon this ground
Catholicism and Socialism may easily meet ; it is sufficient if
they merely remember their antecedents and return to their
principles.*
There is no stranger aberration than that of the levelling
Democrats who attack Christianity and adopt the doctrines of
scientific materialism. If the existing social organization is to
be changed, it must be by invoking certain rights that have
been ignored, and by showing another ideal to be attained. It
is a spiritualist philosophy alone that seeks, among abstract
ideas of justice and rational order, for the notion of a right
superior to any recognized at present, and one to which all
existing rights ought to be subject. It is Christianity which
has put into the minds of the Western world the idea of the
“ kingdom,” that is, an ideal world completely different from
this world of ours. Socialism and Christianity both aspire to
so change things that justice shall reign everywhere.
Scientific materialism will say, after the manner of Pilate,
What is justice? It cares only for the facts it verifies; and
when these facts recur with regularity and sequence, it calls
them natural laws which must be submitted to. How can a
right be conceived which is contrary to facts, that is, to natural
laws ? In the struggle for existence the best armed succeed ;
the feeble disappear leaving no posterity, and thus progress is
attained by natural selection. The Economist, who confines
* In the sermons of Bossuet there are numerous passages which
Socialists might take as a text for their demands. For example, in the
Sermon sur la dignité des pauvres dans P Église, he says, “ God has sent
me, says the Saviour, to preach the Gospel to the poor—Evangelisare
pauperibus misit me. The rich are tolerated only in order that they may
assist the poor. This is why, in the primitive Church, everything was in
common, so that none should be guilty of leaving any one in want. For
what injustice, my brethren, that the poor should bear the whole burden,
and that the whole weight of misery should fall on their shoulders ! If they
complain and murmur against Divine Providence—Lord ! let me say it—it
is not without some colour of justice ; for, as we are all kneaded of the
same lump, and there cannot be much difference between clay and clay,
why do we see, on the one side, joy, honour, and affluence, and, on the
other, sorrow and despair, extreme want, and, more often still, contempt
and servitude ? Why should one lucky individual live in abundance and be
able to satisfy his every little useless fancy, while some unfortunate wretch,
a man as much as he, cannot maintain his poor family, nor allay the pangs
of hunger that devour them ? ”
