Man, an abridgment of the universe, sums up and syncretizes in his person all the potentialities of being, all the sections of the absolute; he is the summit at which these potentialities, which exist only by their divergence, meet in a group, but without penetrating or becoming confounded with each other.Man, therefore, by this aggregation, is at once spirit and matter, spontaneity and reflection, mechanism and life, angel and brute.He is venomous like the viper, sanguinary like the tiger, gluttonous like the hog, obscene like the ape; and devoted like the dog, generous like the horse, industrious like the bee, monogamic like the dove, sociable like the beaver and sheep.And in addition he is man, -- that is, reasonable and free, susceptible of education and improvement.Man enjoys as many names as Jupiter; all these names he carries written on his face; and, in the varied mirror of nature, his infallible instinct is able to recognize them.A serpent is beautiful to the reason; it is the conscience that finds it odious and ugly.The ancients as well as the moderns grasped this idea of the constitution of man by agglomeration of all terrestrial potentialities:
the labors of Gall and Lavater were, if I may say so, only attempts at disintegration of the human syncretism, and their classification of our faculties a miniature picture of nature.Man, in short, like the prophet in the lions' den, is veritably given over to the beasts; and if anything is destined to exhibit to posterity the infamous hypocrisy of our epoch, it is the fact that educated persons, spiritualistic bigots, have thought to serve religion and morality by altering the nature of our race and giving the lie to anatomy.
Therefore the only question left to decide is whether it depends upon man, notwithstanding the contradictions which the progressive emission of his ideas multiplies around him, to give more or less scope to the potentialities placed under his control, or, as the moralists say, to his passions; in other words, whether, like Hercules of old, he can conquer the animality which besets him, the infernal legion which seems ever ready to devour him.
Now, the universal consent of peoples bears witness -- and we have shown it in the third and fourth chapters -- that man, all his animal impulses set aside, is summed up in intelligence and liberty, -- that is, first, a faculty of appreciation and choice, and, second, a power of action indifferently applicable to good and evil.We have shown further that these two faculties, which exercise a necessary influence over each other, are susceptible of indefinite development and improvement.
Social destiny, the solution of the human enigma, is found, then, in these words: EDUCATION, PROGRESS.
The education of liberty, the taming of our instincts, the enfranchisement or redemption of our soul, -- this, then, as Lessing has proved, is the meaning of the Christian mystery.This education will last throughout our life and that of humanity: the contradictions of political economy may be solved; the essential contradiction of our being never will be.That is why the great teachers of humanity, Moses, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, were all apostles of expiation, living symbols of repentance.Man is by nature a sinner, -that is, not essentially ill-doing, but rather ill-done, -- and it is his destiny to perpetually re-create his ideal in himself.
That is what the greatest of painters, Raphael, felt profoundly, when he said that art consists in rendering things, not as nature made them, but as it should have made them.
Henceforth, then, it is ours to teach the theologians, for we alone continue the tradition of the Church, we alone possess the meaning of the Scriptures, of the Councils, and of the Fathers.Our interpretation rests on the most certain and most authentic grounds, on the greatest authority to which men can appeal, the metaphysical construction of ideas and facts.
Yes, the human being is vicious because he is illogical, because his constitution is but an eclecticism which holds in perpetual struggle the potentialities of his being, independently of the contradictions of society.The life of man is only a continual compromise between labor and pain, love and enjoyment, justice and egoism; and the voluntary sacrifice which man makes in obedience to his inferior attractions is the baptism which prepares the way for his reconciliation with God and renders him worthy of that beatific union and eternal happiness.
The object of social economy, in incessantly securing order in labor and favoring the education of the race, is then to render charity -- that charity which knows not how to rule its slaves -- superfluous as far as possible by equality, or better, to make charity develop from justice, as a flower from its stem.Ah! if charity had had the power to create happiness among men, it would have proved it long ago; and socialism, instead of seeking the organization of labor, would have had but to say: "Take care, you are lacking in charity."
But, alas! charity in man is stunted, sly, sluggish, and lukewarm; in order to act, it needs elixirs and aromas.That is why I have clung to the triple dogma of prevarication, damnation, and redemption, -- that is, perfectibility through justice.Liberty here below is always in need of assistance, and the Catholic theory of celestial favors comes to complete this too real demonstration of the miseries of our nature.
Grace, say the theologians, is, in the order of salvation, every help or means which can conduct us to eternal life.That is to say, man perfects himself, civilizes himself, humanizes himself only by the incessant aid of experience, by industry, science, and art, by pleasure and pain, in a word, by all bodily and mental exercises.
