Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism/Book 1/Chapter 1
ESSAY
ON
CATHOLICISM, LIBERALISM, AND SOCIALISM.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
How every great political question always involves a great theological question.
Mr. Proudhon, in his Confessions of a Revolutionist, has written these remarkable words: "It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all our political questions complicated with theological questions." There is nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr. Proudhon. Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from eternity. All things are in God in the profound manner in which effects are in their causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms in their eternal exemplars. In Him are united the vastness of the sea, the glory of the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur of the universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens. In Him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things proceed from Him with number, weight, and measure. In Him are the inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular law. All that lives, finds in Him the laws of life; all that vegetates, the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws of motion; all that has feeling, the law of sensation; all that has understanding, the law of intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation of human society. Omnis humanæ societatis fundamentum convellit qui religionem convellit, says Plato in book 10 of his laws. According to Xenophon, (on Socrates,) "the most pious cities and nations have always been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes) "that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society without a belief in the gods." Rousseau, in his Social Contract, book iv., ch. viii., observes, "that a State was never established without religion as a foundation." Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration, ch. xx., "that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society exists." All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of the gods. Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest, precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words: "May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they make war against the Republic."
The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. As an evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious incredulity and of highest culture that have shone in history with a phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that their splendor is only the inflamed glare of the lightning's flash. It is evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine pencil of the sovereign painter.
What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth, neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions, and sophists are succeeded by hangmen.
He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which governments are amenable; and he possesses soclal truth who comprehends the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God, knows these laws; and he knows God who listens to what He affirms of Himself, and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily resolves itself into a theological truth.
If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated, theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality, which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and supreme. He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology, has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is the perpetual object of human speculations.
Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Deity, even that which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically exclaims, "I abhor thee; thou art not!" illustrates a complete system of theology; as he does who raises to Him a contrite heart, and says, "Lord, have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee." The first blasphemes Him to His face, the second prays at His feet, yet both acknowledge Him, each in his own way; for both pronounce His incommunicable name.
In the manner of pronouncing this name rests the solution of the most profound enigmas; the vocation of races, the providential mission of nations, the great vicissitudes of history, the rise and fall of the most famous empires, their wars and their conquests, the different character of peoples, the physiognomy of nations, and their various fortunes. Where God is considered as the all-pervading essence, man, abandoned to silent contemplation, shuts out the senses and lives as it were in a dream, fanned by fragrant and enervating breezes. The adorer of the infinite substance is condemned to a perpetual slavery and unlimited indolence. For him the desert has something divine which he finds not in the city, because it is more silent, more solitary, and more vast; and yet he will not adore it as his God, because the desert is not infinite. The ocean would become his divinity, because it absorbs all things, if it were not for its strange commotions and noise. The sun which illuminates the universe would be worthy of his worship, if they eye of man did not embrace its resplendent disk. The firmament would be his god, if it were not dotted by the sparkling luminaries; or night would be his god but for its mysterious sounds. His god is all these things united—immensity, obscurity, immobility, silence. There we behold suddenly arise, through the hidden impulsion of a powerful growth, colossal and barbarous empires, that as suddenly fall with a crash, overwhelmed by the weight of other empires more gigantic, and leaving no trace either of their rise or fall. Their armies are undisciplined and the people unintelligent. The army is chiefly characterized by the number of men that compose it. There war has less for its aim to prove the heroism of a nation than its populousness, and even victory would not establish a legal title, except that victory supposes strength, and strength is considered an attribute of the divinity.
Thus we see that the Hindoo theology and history are identical. Turning our eyes westward we behold, at the very portals, a region which ushers in a new world in politics, morals, and theology. The Oriental deity of infinitude is here decomposed, and loses its formidable and austere characteristics: its unity is multitude. There the deity was motionless; here multitude displays an unceasing activity. There silence reigned; here everything is sound, cadence, and harmony. The god of the East extended through all time and filled all space; here the family of divinities has its genealogical tree, and is confined to the summit of mountain. The deity of the East dwells in an eternal peace; while here, in the seat of the gods, all is war, tumult, and confusion.
The political unity of these nations undergoes the same vicissitudes as the religious unity: here each city forms an empire; while there all the communities combined to form one. Among the Orientals we find one God and one King; while in the West we find a republic of Deities and a republic of Cities. In this multitude of divinities and cities all is disorder and confusion. To men is imputed something of the heroic and heavenly, and to the gods something of the human and terrestrial. The gods accord to men the intelligence of great things, and the perception of the beautiful, and receive in turn from them their discords and their vices. They have illustrious and virtuous men, and incestuous and adulterous gods. This people, impressionable and ardent, is distinguished for its poets and artists, and is an object of wonder to the world. Life has no charms for it, except as it reflects the light of glory; nor is death terrible, except in the oblivion that follows it. Utterly sensual, it values in life only its pleasures; and it considers death as happy, when it comes crowned with flowers. Familiarity and affinity with its gods, make it vain, capricious, and petulant. Without a due respect for the gods, it lacks dignity in its designs, fixedness of purpose, and stability of resolve. It regards the Oriental World as a region overspread with darkness, and peopled with statues; while the Orientals, contemplating the ephemeral life, premature death, and brief glory of this people, consider it as a nation of pigmies. For the one, greatness consists in duration; for the other, it is action. Thus Grecian theology, Grecian history, and Grecian character are one and the same.
This phenomenon is conspicuous in the history of the Roman people. Their principal gods, of Etruscan origin, were Grecian in their quality of deities, and Oriental in so far as Etruscan. They were numerous as the gods of Greece, and at the same time austere and somber as the gods of the East. Rome combines the East and the West, both in politics and in religion. It is a city like that of Theseus, and an empire like that of Cyrus. Rome is a type of Janus, being two-faced, and each visage bearing a different aspect. One symbolizes Oriental duration, and the other Grecian activity; possessing a mobility so great as to reach the confines of the earth, and so prolonged in duration that the world proclaims it eternal. Chosen by the divine counsel to prepare the way for Him who was to come, its providential mission was to assimilate to itself all theologies, and to rule over all nations. In obedience to a mysterious influence, all the gods find a place in the Roman Capitol, and the awed nations, overcome with terror, lie humbled and prostrate under the Roman yoke. All the cities are successively despoiled of their gods, and all the gods are one after the other despoiled of their temples and cities. This vast empire holds as its own the Oriental legitimacy—multitude and strength; and the legitimacy of the West—intelligence and discipline. For this reason it subjects all, and none resist it, or complain of its crushing force. In the same way that its theology differs from, and yet has something in common with, all theologies, so has Rome also much that is peculiar to herself, and much in common with all the cities conquered by her arms, or obscured by her glory. She has the Spartan severity, the Attic culture, the pomp of Memphis, and the grandeur of Babylon and Nineveh. In order to make a succinct proposition, we may indicate the Orient as the thesis, the West as the antithesis, and Rome as the synthesis. The Roman Empire represents the absorption of the Oriental thesis and the Western antithesis in the Roman synthesis. Let us, then, resolve this potent synthesis into its constituent elements, and it will be seen that there can be no synthesis in the political and social order, without a corresponding condition in the religious order. Both among the Oriental nations, the republics of Greece, and in the Roman Empire, theological systems serve to elucidate the political. Theology is the light of history.
The Roman Capitol could not be despoiled of its magnificence, except through the destruction of the means which had enabled it to attain its culminating point. No one could establish his power in Rome without the permission of the gods, and no one could obtain possession of the Capitol without first displacing the supreme god, Jupiter Optimus Mazimus. The ancients, who had a confused idea of the vital power inherent in all religious systems, believed that no city could be conquered so long as it was not abandoned by the national deities. Consequently, in all the wars of city against city, nation against nation, and race against race, a spiritual and religious controversy accompanied the material and political struggle. The besieged, while making an armed resistance, implored their gods not to forsake them. The besiegers, in their turn, conjured the gods, with mysterious imprecations, to desert the city. Woe to that city wherein resounds the fearful cry, "The gods have fled—the gods have abandoned us!" The people of Israel were invincible so long as Moses held uplifted hands toward God, and could no longer conquer when these fell powerless. Moses is a type of the human race, proclaiming through all ages, though under various and diverse forms, the omnipotence of God and man's dependence, the power of religion, and the efficacy of prayer.
Rome fell because her gods succumbed; her empire was destroyed because her theology became extinct; and history thus plainly exhibits the great principle that lies in the deepest recesses of the human conscience. Rome had given to the world her Cesars and her gods. Jupiter and Cesar Augustus divided between them the imperial authority over things human and divine. Amid the rise and fall of mighty empires, never since the creation had a power existed under the sun of so august a majesty, and so surprising a grandeur. All nations, even the most rude and unpolished, had submitted to her yoke. The world had laid down its arms, and held still.
About this time was born in the land of prodigies, in an humble stable, and of mean parentage, a most wonderful child. It was said of Him, that at the time of his advent among men, a new star shone forth in the heavens; that, scarcely born, he was worshiped by shepherds and kings; that heavenly spirits had spoken to men, and appeared in the sky; that his mysterious and incommunicable name had been predicted from the beginning of the world; that the prophets had foretold his reign; and that even the sibyls had chanted his victories. These extraordinary rumors having reached the ears of the servants of Cesar, inspired them with vague apprehensions and terror. This vague uneasiness and fear soon passed, however, when they saw the days and nights succeed each other as always, in their perpetual rotations, and that the sun continued as before to illumine the horizon of Rome. Then the imperial governors said to each other, Cesar is immortal, and the reports which have reached us were spread by timid and idle people. The most efficacious remedy against the prejudices of the vulgar is contempt and oblivion.
Thus passed away thirty years. But, at the expiration of thirty years, silly and discontented people again sought, in new and still more surprising rumors, a fresh aliment for their stupidity. They said that the child had become a man, and, while receiving upon his head the waters of Jordan, the heavens opened, and a spirit, in shape like a dove, descended upon him, and a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son." In the mean time, he who had baptized him, a grave and austere man, an inhabitant of the desert, and a man who avoided society, exhorted the people, continually saying, "Repent ye;" and, pointing to the child made man, gave this testimony of him: "This is the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world."
There was no doubt whatever among the strong minded of the age that all this was simply a farce, badly enacted, and performed by players of low repute. The Jewish people had always been prone to sorceries and superstitions. In past ages, and when captives of Babylon, they turned their eyes, dimmed with weeping, toward their abandoned temple and lost country; a great conqueror, foretold by their prophets, had redeemed them from captivity, and had restored to them both their country and their temple. It was then very natural that this people should expect a new redemption and a new redeemer, who would forever release them from the yoke of Rome.
If this had been all, unprejudiced and intelligent people, of whatever condition in life, would have disregarded these rumors, as they had done those of the past, depending upon time, that great minister of human reason, to dissipate them. But some inevitable fate disposed otherwise of matters, because it came to pass that Jesus (this was the name of the person of whom such great wonders were related) commenced to teach a new doctrine, and to perform marvelous works. His boldness or madness went so far as to call those who were hypocritical and arrogant by their true names, and to designate as whitened sepulchers those who were so. He counseled the poor to be patient, and then scoffing at them, proclaimed them blessed. In order to punish the rich, who despised him, he admonished them to "be merciful." He condemned fornication and adultery, yet he sat at table with adulterers and fornicators. Filled with jealousy, he affected contempt for the doctors and wise men; and so mean were his sentiments that he found pleasure in conversing with common and vulgar people.
His arrogance was so extreme that he styled himself the Lord of Earth, Sea, and Heaven; and he was so consummate in the arts of hypocrisy that he washed the feet of some poor fishermen. In spite of his studied austerity of manner, he announced that his doctrine was love, condemned the industry of Martha, and blessed the idleness of Mary. He held secret relations with infernal spirits, and bartered his soul for the power of working miracles. He was followed by a crowd who adored him.
Notwithstanding their good-will, it is plain that the guardians of holy things and of the imperial prerogatives could no longer remain passive; as they were officially responsible for the preservation of the majesty of religion and the peace of the empire. That which chiefly disturbed them was the information they received that a great number of people were ready to proclaim him king of the Jews; and, moreover, that he had announced himself as the Son of God, and intended to dissuade the people from the payment of the tribute.
He who had said such things and performed such works could not but die by the hands of the people. It was only necessary to explain and substantiate the charges against him. When he was questioned concerning the tributes, he made the celebrated answer which disconcerted the inquisitor: "Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and unto God the things which are God's;" which was equivalent to saying: "I leave unto you Cesar, and I take away from you Jupiter." When questioned by Pilate and the high priest, he repeated the assertion that he was the Son of God, and that his reign was not of this world. Then Caiphas said: "This man is guilty, and must die;" but Pilate, on the contrary, said: "Liberate this man, for he is innocent."
Caiphas viewed the matter in its religious aspect as high priest; Pilate considered the subject in its political bearings as a laic. Pilate could not understand the connection between the State and religion, between Cesar and Jupiter, between politics and theology. Caiphas, however, judged that the introduction of a new religion would overturn the government; that a new God would dethrone Cesar; and that the theological question involved the political. The multitude instinctively thought as Caiphas did, and with rude clamors accused Pilate of being an enemy of Tiberius. Such was then the condition of affairs.
Pilate, the immortal type of corrupt judges, in his timidity sacrificed Jesus, and delivered him up to the furious populace, thinking to absolve his conscience by the washing his hands of it. The Son of God was crucified, reviled, and derided. Then he was assailed by the rich and the poor, by the hypocritical and the proud, by the priests and the learned, by women of bad repute and men of evil conscience, the adulterers and fornicators. Jesus expired on the cross while praying for his enemies and commending his soul to his Father.
For a time tranquillity was restored, but soon afterward events occurred never before witnessed by men: the abomination of desolation in the temple, the mothers of Sion cursing their fecundity, the sepulchers burst asunder, Jerusalem depopulated, its walls leveled to the ground, its inhabitants dispersed throughout the earth, and the world in arms; the eagles of Rome piercing the air with their cries of terror, Rome despoiled of her Cesars and her gods, the cities laid waste and the deserts peopled; men clothed in skins, and who could not read, governing the nations, and multitudes obeying that voice from Jordan which had said, "Repent ye;" and that other voice which cried out, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me;" and kings adoring the cross, which was everywhere erected.
What was the cause of so great changes and revolutions? Why so vast a desolation, and so universal a cataclysm? What did it mean? What had happened? Nothing, except that some theologians went about proclaiming a new theology throughout the world.