De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That, in the first place, moral dogmatism vainly seeks a means of restoration on the side of the will, to which it ineptly attributes primacy in the business of acquiring and knowing religious truth. And that it appeals altogether without warrant, at this point, to the Catholic doctrine on the assent of faith, so as to procure for itself a certain semblance and appearance of orthodoxy.

For in truth there are not two notions of truth: one valid in the things that pertain to religion, and another in the rest. If anyone denies this, contention with him is useless, because either he is dreaming, or he is conscious in himself that he is shamelessly calling truth that which is not truth. « To whom at least this is manifest, says Augustine, de ver. rel. c. 36, that falsity is that by which a thing is thought to be what it is not, he understands that to be truth which shows what is ». To that faculty, therefore, most evidently belongs the discovery of truth in whatever order — to that faculty to which it belongs to see, to apprehend, to perceive things that are and as they are. But this faculty is not the will, which does not see, which does not perceive, which does not apprehend, but desires and pursues the good, whether true or apparent, whether real or imaginary, which the intellect shows. Therefore, once truth as perceived in the intellect and by the intellect has been destroyed, to attempt a restoration on the side of the will is as discordant and absurd as if, for a half-blind man, you provided the guidance of a blind man as a remedy for his infirmity. Not that every influence of the will should be denied in the business of acquiring and knowing truth; especially of that truth which is high above our minds, and which, both in itself and in its practical consequences, is contrary to the depraved inclinations of corrupted nature. But how the will is related to the intellect must be considered.

First, the will is related as removing an obstacle. For there are many things that disturb the judgment of reason, and inject rheum and phlegm into the eye of the mind. There are unbridled passions, there are perverse affections, there are swellings of pride: there are also contentions, dissensions, jealousies, which, like fire in wood fattened with moisture, breathe out only smoke and cannot have bright flames. Nor is it doubtful that a good will contributes very much to the removal of impediments of this kind. — Secondly, it is related as moving the intellect to seek the reasons from which the truth can appear, as applying the edge of the mind to a diligent consideration and discussion of them, as obtaining also from God the helps necessary in this great business. And because the will certainly does not do this if it hates the light, if it fears to come to the light, if it loves darkness more than light, therefore the discovery of truth is not undeservedly ascribed by Augustine to the love of truth itself, where he says: « If truth is not desired with all the powers of the soul, it can in no way be found. But if it is sought as it deserves, it cannot withdraw itself from its lovers. Hence that which you also are wont to have in your mouth: Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. Nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed. By love it is asked, by love it is sought, by love it is knocked, by love it is revealed, and finally by love one perseveres in that which has been revealed » ¹.

Thirdly, finally, the will is related as commanding the intellect's assent, when the intellect itself is not constrained by a perfect evidence of the truth, and is not necessarily carried away by that full perspicuity of the object which leaves no place at all even for a possible doubt. But here a distinction is especially needed. For either the will commands an assent proportioned to the dignity of the reasons that have previously become known to the intellect as the legitimate foundations of a mental assent, or it commands an assent disproportioned, and one that is resolved, either wholly or in part, into its own good pleasure or arbitrariness. If the former, well. But if the latter, what else will be had but the empty and vain figment of a certain irrational opinion? For in every judgment that is required according to the norm of right reason, the will must not intervene as substituting itself in the place of the reasons, or as adding to their weight, but only as making the intellect assent according to their merit — namely, wherever those conditions are absent in which a spontaneous, necessary, and altogether unimpedable adherence of the mind follows². And there is no need to dwell now on a longer demonstration, because these principles are evident, these principles are absolute, these principles admit no exception, not even in the business of divine faith, to which they appeal inconsiderately, so as to procure for their dogmatism a certain appearance of orthodoxy.

For they say that we have no reason necessitating belief in the divine institution of the Church; that faith is a gift, that it is a free act; that if faith resulted from our reasonings as the conclusion of a syllogism follows from the premises, no one not out of his mind could ever withdraw himself from faith, etc.³. And from this they further infer that our reasons for believing have not in themselves more firmness than those which are the foundation of free opinions; that the believer's intellect is not in a better condition, for its part, than that of the opiner; that it belongs to the good will, to the will assisted by grace, to add or supply by its free determination what is lacking to the weight of the reasons; and that by this means the general principle itself of moral dogmatism is most consonant with the things that orthodox doctrine holds and confesses concerning theological and saving faith.

But against all these things stands this: that when the reason for believing is at issue, the discourse can be either about the reason of faith itself considered in itself, or about the reason of the judgments that precede faith as its preambles. And if indeed the discourse is about the preambles of faith, we certainly have reasons necessitating us to judge most certainly that it is reasonable, that it is due, that it is obligatory to believe the divine institution of the Church as revealed in fact by God. And these reasons are called the motives of credibility, some absolutely, others relatively sufficient, according to the diverse capacity and the diverse condition of intellects, but in all ways always independent of the good pleasure of the will. Although, to be sure, it does not yet follow that free choice will have no part there — free choice in whose power it will always be, either directly or indirectly, to turn the mind away from the consideration of the premises from which this necessary conclusion arises: therefore the Catholic revelation is reasonably credible, therefore it is to be believed obligatorily. But now, if the discourse is about the assent of faith itself considered in itself, its reason is nothing less than the authority of God revealing. Which authority, to every man not carried off by the delirium of madness, most evidently becomes known as a foundation most worthy of the firmest adherence, inasmuch as it is constituted by the infinite wisdom and truthfulness of Him who is subsistent Truth, and whose attestations, from this very fact, from this alone that they are His attestations, are also absolutely indefectible from the order of the true. And yet, since to yield to authority as such is not placed in the spontaneity of the intellect, the intervention of the free will is still necessary — not indeed that it may add to the reason for assent, than which nothing can be altogether more sufficient, but only that it may determine the execution or exercise of the act, according as and insofar as the intellect judges that act reasonable, and due, and obligatory. Neither therefore in the preambles of faith, nor a fortiori in the act of believing itself, is the will in the place of a reason, or in the place of a complement of reason. And therefore the Vatican Council, assigning the unshaken solidity of the reason for believing, says: By reason of the authority of God Himself revealing, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. But concerning the reasons through which the fact of divine revelation first becomes known, it adds: That nevertheless the homage of our faith should be consonant with reason, God willed that with the internal aids of the Holy Spirit there should be joined the external arguments of His revelation, namely divine deeds, and in the first place miracles and prophecies, which, since they clearly demonstrate the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of divine revelation and accommodated to the intelligence of all. Signs, he says, most certain. Which therefore need no supplement whatever from the arbitrariness of the will.

So far, then, is moral dogmatism from receiving support from the Catholic doctrine on the reason and mode of the assent of Christian faith, that by this very doctrine it is rather evacuated, and already destroyed. But it is destroyed still more in this, that it wills sincere and true faith to depend necessarily on a will morally perfect with the perfection of love or charity. For they distinguish between the faith of love and the faith of fear, and say that the faith of fear is not sincere faith, because it contains in itself the desire not to believe; that with it and through it one walks in darkness; that it is a dead faith, and consequently a constrained one, etc.⁴. In which indeed they will seem to themselves to take some argument from the testimony of James the apostle, where he treats of the faith of demons who believe and tremble, compared with the faith of a man, which if it has not works is dead in itself. But against this is, first, that that faith of demons by no means depends on the free will, whether it be good or evil, but on the sole evidence of signs, and therefore can in no way be called either a faith of fear or a faith of love, unless perchance one pleases to call a faith of fear that which has fear as a consequent effect: in which sense the consideration is no longer to the point, as is evidently clear. But against this is, secondly, that the faith of a Christian without works is by no means compared with the faith of demons as regards the species of the act, but only as regards this: that just as to the demons all that knowledge which they have of divine things from the evidence of signs profits nothing for salvation, so to the Christian, as long as he does not strive to conform his life to his faith, faith itself will not be able to profit. But against this is, thirdly, that the faith of a bad Christian is called dead, not because it is constrained, not because it lacks sincerity, but because it is idle and does not pass into the effect of a good work. But against this is, finally, fourthly, that every doctrine which makes true Christian faith inseparable from charity and the state of justice is a heretical doctrine, a Protestant doctrine, long since condemned in the Council of Trent, Sess. 6, can. 28, and most recently in the Vatican Council, Sess. 3, cap. 3. For in the Council of Trent it is thus held: If anyone says that, when grace is lost through sin, faith is likewise always lost; or that the faith which remains is not true faith, although it is not living; or that he who has faith without charity is not a Christian, let him be anathema. And in the Vatican Council: Wherefore faith itself in itself, even if it does not work through charity, is a gift of God, and its act is a work pertaining to salvation, by which man renders free obedience to God Himself, consenting and cooperating with His grace, which he could resist. Again, therefore, they appeal in vain to Catholic doctrine, precisely at the point in which they openly contradict a solemnly defined dogma.

From first to last, therefore, it is falsely asserted that the knowledge of faith begs its value from a good will. Falsely is it said that the defect of adequation with objective truth is compensated in dogmas by what derives from the influence of a good life. Falsely is it supposed that in the things of religion our notions are worth just so much, no more and no less, as our moral life is worth, as the end toward which we tend is worth. Falsely, finally, is that new account of truth set up, which no longer shows what is, but what morality contributes. But now it will be worth while to investigate whether this very morality, which is the basis and foundation of the whole system, remains safe and whole in it. Of which let the following assertion be.

That moral dogmatism not only does not restore the collapsed building of truth by setting the will for the good as principle and foundation, but heaps ruin upon ruin, namely the ruin of the moral order upon the ruin of intellectual cognition, by making the notion of morality independent of the notion of God and of His law, and by constructing the rule of the honourable upon the immanent powers or aspirations of the soul alone.

Here, concerning morality, certain preliminary notions are altogether necessary. The notion of morality includes two concepts. It includes first the concept of goodness or malice in human acts; it includes further the concept of obligation, by which we are bound to do good and not to do evil. And it is always and necessarily founded upon the knowledge of God, both under the aspect of the ultimate end of our will, and under the aspect of the legislator commanding that order unto the end be preserved, and forbidding that it be disturbed.

Consider first morality insofar as it includes the concept of goodness or malice in human acts. This goodness, this malice, whence is it taken? Speaking generally, the goodness or defect of any operation must be taken by respect to the end that has been set before the active principle of the operation. For the operation is related as the motion of an operative power toward a term to be attained. It is therefore good if it is rightly directed into that term, and it is evil and defective if otherwise. As in the operations of nature, « when an act proceeds from a natural power according to the natural inclination toward the end, then rectitude is preserved in the act, because the mean does not depart from the extremes, namely the act from the order of the active principle to the end »¹. But when a defect of the organ or some disturbance arising from any source whatever makes the act deflect from that order, then the character of a defective and evil act comes in. The same is also the case in the operations of art, for rectitude is then preserved when the operation is contained within the line of the end that the art has set before itself to attain; the character of defect comes in when it deviates from that end, whatever that end finally be. « Since sin is by deviation from the order to the end, in the act of art it happens in two ways that there is sin. In one way, by deviation from the particular end intended by the artisan, and this sin will be proper to the art, for instance if the artisan intending to make a good work makes a bad one, or intending to make a bad one makes a good one. In another way, by deviation from the common end of human life, and in this way he is said to sin if he intends to make a bad work and makes it, whereby another is deceived. But this sin is not proper to the artisan as artisan, but as he is a man. Hence from the first sin the artisan is blamed as artisan; but from the second the man is blamed as man² ». And so, running through all the kinds of operations, goodness or defect will always be found to be traced back to the relation of the act to the end or term set before the operative power, according as the act is rightly directed into that end, or on the contrary deflects from the due order of the same end.

Now therefore it must be seen what is, in morals, the active principle of the operation, and what is the end or term set before that same principle. For from this, and from this alone, will the notion of the moral act be taken, as good or not good, right or not right. Now the principle of the moral act as such is the free will, as all will easily concede, since the genus of morals evidently begins there where the dominion of the will is first found. But it is the will to which the direction of the whole of human life manifestly belongs, because it is the will that moves all the other powers. It has therefore for its end and ultimate term the supreme end itself of human life, which is no other than God, under whose order our whole life, all of it, is constituted. Further, the will by its nature regards the highest and absolute good, and although it can by its own arbitrariness place the highest good in act in various things, for instance in pleasure, in riches, in honours, etc., yet there is one only in which the character of the highest good is truly and not merely apparently preserved; which one again is goodness itself by essence, God. The rectitude therefore and goodness of a voluntary or moral act as such will consist essentially in the order observed which terminates at the end, God; its perversity and malice, in the withdrawal and deviation from the order that is unto that same end, God; there is the norm, there the rule, there the reason according to which it is conceived what is good and what is evil in morals. For according to this it is understood, in the first place, that moral evil is whatever is committed immediately against God Himself, as is to blaspheme God, to disbelieve God, to deny worship to God, etc. According to this it is understood next that moral evil is whatever is against the ordered love of a man for himself: both because the love of the good that we have from God leads us by the hand to love more than ourselves that first and supreme cause from which we share all things, and in which our own good is more contained than in ourselves; and because, when that is corrupted which disposes beforehand, that can no longer stand for which the predisposition and the leading by the hand are necessary. On this account, therefore, that which is repugnant to the ordered love of oneself is repugnant also to subjection to God the ultimate end, and for that reason is counted among the things that are morally evil. According to this, finally, it is understood that moral evil is whatever injures or destroys the good of human fellowship or society, because again, to corrupt the compact of human society is nothing else than to remove a necessary condition, or to destroy a necessary means of tending to the ultimate end of human life, God, and to that extent it is truly said to be against the end itself, if not immediately, at least mediately, as much as lies in its nature.

Such, then, is the principle of discerning the things that are good or evil in morals, and there is or can be no other. If you remove the end, God, or merely prescind from it, nothing then of all the things to which human desire extends will be able to appear as deordinated with a moral deordination, that is, one falling upon a voluntary act precisely as it is voluntary. For with the end, God, shut out, there no longer remains any end except one that would be either in other creatures or in man himself, and neither counts for anything in the matter. Not an end that would be in other creatures: because free choice is not constituted under other creatures as such, from which it shares nothing; because free choice has no natural relation or dependence upon any creature, such that a term to be pursued should be thought to be set before it by that creature; because consequently it is impossible that an act of free choice should exist as precisely perverse and deordinated by that very fact that it goes beyond the order, the fitness, the exigency, the good, the utility of any other creature whatsoever. Nor again an end that would be in man himself, because then the human will, remaining always fixed in its own good, would always act rightly and in order, and by this means every distinction between good and evil in morals would become impossible, would no longer have any sense, and could not even come into thought.

But if you now consider morality insofar as it superadds to the notion of good and evil the notion of obligation to do good and to turn away from evil, the dependence of the idea of morality upon the presupposed knowledge of God will appear to you still more manifestly. For nothing is more evident than that an obligation binding the conscience, and binding man (whether he will or not) insuperably, imports in its concept a subjection to a rule of absolute necessity, and that imposed by some superior, really, or on the part of the thing, truly existing: since a restrictive subjection of liberty, in respect of an abstraction that would have no being outside the consideration of one's own intellect, is a chimera and a fable, is a sport of the imagination, is an empty phantom, which is blown away with the same ease with which it is constructed. And on this account I say that it is plain from the terms themselves that the rule of morality, insofar as it is apprehended as obligatory, is apprehended by that very fact as descending from the law of someone who dominates. But that this can be no other than God is made manifest by reasons plainly obvious, which have already been set out elsewhere, where the notion of sin was treated³, and which it will be helpful to recall briefly to memory here again. For first, since the rule of morals dominates man, not insofar as he is this or that man, but insofar as he is man simply, it can have been imposed by Him alone to whom man is subject according as he partakes of human nature. And this is none but God, who alone is the author and lord of human nature. Further, secondly, the rule of morality cannot descend upon defective wills, except from Him whose intention cannot altogether deviate from the end of morality, and who exists by essence absolutely impeccable, as adhering indeclinably and immovably to the supreme good which is the principle and term of the whole moral order. But again this is God alone. For, as is said in the Compendio theologiae, c. 113: « Wherever the will cannot fail of the end, it is manifest that there the defect of a voluntary action cannot be. But the will cannot fail in respect of the good which is the nature of the one willing. For any thing whatsoever appetites in its own way its own perfect being, which is the good of each thing; but in respect of an exterior good it can fail, being content with the good connatural to it. In Him, therefore, whose nature is the ultimate end, the defect of a voluntary action cannot occur; and this belongs to God alone, for His goodness, which is the ultimate end of things, is His nature. But the nature of others that will is not the ultimate end; whence in them the defect of a voluntary action can occur through this, that the will remains fixed in its own good, not tending further into the supreme good which is the ultimate end »."

Further, thirdly, moral obligation is not born to descend except from that supreme superior who is not only absolutely holy in Himself, but also necessarily wills that all other wills should be debtors of the order to be preserved. But this again and again is verified in God alone, for whom it is the same to will Himself as the ultimate end of all things and to will that the order of justice be preserved in the universe, since the order of justice and the order of the ultimate end are adequately convertible. Finally, if we wish to prescind from God, what, I ask, will remain? There will remain perhaps some aesthetic fitness, individual advantage, social utility, and whatever else of that kind. But these are far, far from an absolute obligation, which ought to be superior to the will of man, superior to any good otherwise to be obtained, superior to any pain eventually to be endured, superior to the difficulty of any effort required for the keeping of duty. But it is plainly repugnant that in man himself, considered in himself, there should be a necessity greater than man. It is repugnant that any creature should be the indefinite and insuperable reason of a rule always to be observed and never to be passed over. It is repugnant that it should be the supreme norm and the ultimate end, as it would have to be in order to impose such and so great a necessity.

Thus, then, from first to last, the notion of morality is a notion essentially founded upon the notion of God the ultimate end, to whom the rational creature is wholly subject, and from whom it has the law imposed — commanding indeed those things that lead to the end, and to that extent preserving the rectitude of order; but forbidding those things that lead away from the end, and to that extent disturbing the order. Whoever therefore loosens the notion of morality from the notion of God, whoever sets before morality another basis, another foundation, another principle, that man destroys morality as much as in him lies, and reduces it to a mere human inclination, found on the same line and at the same grade as the other inclinations, which are undoubtedly subject to free choice — so far from dictating to it a law of right action, and setting before it an irremovable norm of ordered operation.

But now moral dogmatism does not found the notion of morality upon the notion of God, creator, lord, legislator, and our ultimate end; but rather, conversely, it wills the notion of God to be the offspring and procreation of morality. Prior is the will furnished with morality; posterior is the knowledge of God, to which the mind is bent under the pressure of the heart. There remains therefore a morality independent of God as far as we are concerned, a morality emerging from the immanent powers or aspirations of the soul alone, a morality finally enclosed and circumscribed on every side by that Kantian categorical imperative, which, brought back to the scales of reason, is found to be empty, not subsisting in itself, consisting of contradictory notes, and therefore to be contemned.

You feel indeed in yourself inclinations to keep justice, temperance, chastity, but you feel also others, and wholly opposed. You feel inclinations to do good to others, to love parents, children, brothers, neighbours; but in animals too it is possible to observe similar propensions, and sometimes indeed very tender and delicate affections, as Basil relates, l. 8 Hexaem., of the storks which cherish their parents worn out with age with their feathers, refresh them with food, and support them in flight. Up to this point, therefore, there is nothing more than a certain instinct, among the many others with which our composite nature abounds. But when you seem to yourself to hear the voice of conscience which commands categorically, that you should follow these inclinations before others as obligatory rules, you are the sport of a vain sentimentality. But I say this of a vain sentimentality, as long as you maintain your immanentist man with all your might; as long as that real man whom you have driven out with a pitchfork, and who at least confusedly is conscious of himself as constituted under the law of God, you keep driving further off with the same pitchfork, and do not suffer to return. Does conscience command? But no one appears in whose name it commands or can command. Does it command categorically? But no necessity can be assigned to which that categorical injunction is proportioned. For if you bring forward the honour and dignity of one's own person, I ask of what dignity of person, of what honour you speak. Is it of the honour that you enjoy among others? But in this there can be a reason restraining the hand, or more truly, restraining an action that may come to the knowledge of other men; but as regards the forum and the dictate of conscience, nothing, and nothing further. Is it of the honour that you enjoy with yourself? But against this, first, because honour of this kind is subject to each one's own good pleasure. How then does that injunction, rising up so insolently even against the things you more ardently desire, not exceed just limits? But against this, secondly, because the estimation of honour and dignity is wont to be so broad and various among men, that concerning what your honour requires — especially in the eyes alone of your individual conscience — you may rightly and deservedly constitute yourself an independent judge and arbiter. But against this, thirdly, because, prescinding always from the higher end and from the order by which you are bound to it, you will place honour and dignity in nothing better and more rightly than in not abdicating the liberty with which nature endowed you, and made you master of your own determinations. But if anything occurs to the contrary, it will be a bugbear, it will be a prejudice, it will be a subjective impression, which cold reason, recalling it to critical examination, will pronounce vain and empty.

Thus, then, the morality to which moral dogmatism recurs is not in truth morality, but the radical negation of all morality. Nor does it matter that they perhaps intend the morality such as all men, more or less confusedly, conceive it. For this is the perpetual contradiction into which they infallibly fall, whoever they are who pervert those first notions that are laid up in our reason as an incorruptible ground. They always associate the true notion with the sophisticated notion, and clothe the sophisticated one with the attributes and properties that they find in the true. But we are now speaking of morality such as the system sets it up. A system, namely, in which man must draw all things from his own innermost ground and vital potentiality, lest an undue limit be set to his legitimate autonomy, and to his own manner of autochthonous expansion. A system setting before him a good will, for which blind instinct is the criterion of good, and an imaginary law the directing rule. A system, finally, not only dissolving the bond of morality's dependence on God, but even making the very knowledge of God and every other religious dogma spring up under the incubation of the heart, whose suggestion the intellect obeys, so that in the last analysis it is purely and simply the will in place of reason. And do you not see there the ruin of the moral order heaped upon the ruin of intellectual cognition, so that the destruction is complete? There is yet another thing by which the consummation of the destruction is shown still more evidently, of which, in the last place, something must now be said.

That moral dogmatism consummates the irreparable destruction of the truth of faith, by proclaiming the purely practical value of the dogmas of religion, that is, by asserting that no objective value can be in them, as being altogether unknowable to us, but that they are only norms or excitements to action, inasmuch as we ought so to conduct ourselves in acting as if those things were true which are presented to our intellect by faith.

For indeed nothing is more open and obvious than the practical value of the dogmas of the Christian religion. Nothing is more usual with the holy Fathers than that they say that right faith is the beginning of a good life; that Christians ought to be distinguished from unbelievers by works and morals, in the same way as they are distinguished from them by faith; that works are built upon faith, as a building is built upon a foundation. Augustine says, de fide et symbolo, n. 25: « This is the faith which, to be held in few words, is given in the creed to new Christians..., so that by believing they may be subjected to God, being subjected may live rightly, living rightly may cleanse the heart, the heart being cleansed may understand what they believe ». Leo the Great says, Serm. 37, n. 1: « The memory of the things done by the Saviour of the human race confers great profit upon us, if what we venerate as believed we take up as to be imitated. For in the dispensations of the mysteries of Christ there are both the powers of grace and the incitements of doctrine, so that Him whom we confess by the spirit of faith we may also follow by the example of works ». Gregory says, hom. 26 in Evangelia, n. 9: « For he truly believes who carries out in working what he believes. On the contrary, concerning those who retain faith in name only, Paul says: They confess that they know God, but they deny Him by their deeds ». And therefore, concerning the faithful who live badly, the same Gregory says, l. 25 Moral. c. 10: « They pursue in morals what they venerate by belief. To whom by divine judgment it often happens that, through this that they live wickedly, they also lose that which they believe wholesomely ». And below, l. 28, c. 7: « There are those who truly believe the eternal things which they hear, and yet contradict by living badly that faith which they hold. » But even if all the testimonies of the same sense and of the same doctrine had to be reported one by one, I do not think that even whole volumes could suffice. But concerning the sense of Scripture, who could doubt? Scripture teaches that faith without works is dead in itself; that the grace of God our Saviour has appeared, instructing us, that denying impiety and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and piously in this world; that those who profess the Christian faith ought to be, by virtue of their profession, chaste, prudent, sober, holy in all conversation, that the word of God be not blasphemed; and six hundred other things of this kind. And lest we seem to be content with these more general things, behold for you some things more determinate. What relation, for example, there is between the special dogma of the incarnation and the rule of morals, Scripture comprehends in few words, saying: Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who when He was in the form of God..., emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant... He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, death even of the cross¹. And concerning the special dogma of the resurrection of Christ the same Scripture says: If Christ is preached that He rose from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ risen. But if Christ has not risen,... your faith is vain... Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners². And concerning the special dogma of the Eucharist it says: The Lord Jesus, in the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, etc... Therefore whoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord³. And so, running through individual points, from the truth of the dogma one descends to conclusions that regard the purity of life, the correction of a bad will, and the exercise of virtues of every kind. Nor will it be right to exempt from that condition even those dogmas which would seem to be purely speculative, for instance that most high mystery of the Trinity, in which we certainly have an incitement to subject ourselves to God by the most full obedience of intellect and will, to begin the life that awaits us with the angels in heaven, to tend with all the powers of the soul toward that vision in which alone the enigma will be revealed, the apostle testifying where he says: We see now through a mirror and in an enigma, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known⁴.

And so it is by no means to be denied that our dogmas avail very much for directing right action, and if that new system which they call by the name of pragmatism intended nothing else, it would be enunciating a truth that belongs to the very first elements of Christian doctrine.

But this too belongs to the first elements, namely: that those dogmas avail something in order to the rule of morals to the extent that they are absolutely true, and as such are most certainly held by us, and believed without doubt. Prior must be the truth which shows what is: the truth about God the first cause and ultimate end, about God the legislator, about God the judge, about God the rewarder: the truth about the Son of God incarnate for us men and for our salvation, who suffered, died, and rose again from the dead: the truth about the Church instituted by that one Saviour of the human race, and having in herself the means conducive to the attainment of the beatitude which the blood of J. C. merited for us: the truth about the sacraments, the truth about the remission of sins, the truth about eternal life promised to those who have done good, about eternal damnation appointed for those who have done otherwise. And this foundation of absolute truth once presupposed, I certainly take the rule of action from the dogmas reasonably. This foundation being removed, is it not folly, is it not madness? « We stand at the bodies of the holy martyrs, said Gregory⁵. Would these have given their flesh to death unless it had been most certainly established for them that there is a life for which they ought to die? » And speaking universally, what, I ask, is more foolish than to take the rule of action from the unknown, from nothing, from empty formulas of which it is not known, nor can it be known, what corresponds to them in reality — indeed, this one thing is known, that they are not consonant with reality? But this is what moral dogmatism does, by proclaiming the purely practical value of the dogmas of religion. Therefore it destroys this very practical value together with the objective one, and the ruin is absolute, the ruin is total.

They think they are saying something when they say that the sense of our dogmas is that we ought so to conduct ourselves in acting as if those things were true which are presented to our intellect by faith: « God is personal is meant to say: Conduct yourself in your relations with God as in your relations with a human person. Likewise: Jesus is risen is meant to say: Be in relation to Him as you would have been before He died, as you are in relation to a contemporary. And likewise also, the dogma of the real presence is meant to say that you must have before the consecrated host the same attitude that you would have before Jesus made visible »⁶. In truth, we are in the midst of complete somnambulism. For, as I think, for everyone who wakes for a little from sleep, this proposition, God is personal, means that God is personal, that is, subsisting in Himself, distinct from the world and from all finite things that partake of being. This proposition, Jesus is risen, means that Jesus rose, that is, returned from death to life. This proposition, Jesus is really present in the sacrament, means that He is really present, that is, that under the species of the sacrament, in place of the substance of the bread, Christ Himself lies hidden, truly and substantially. Otherwise, what a logomachy! what a lying acceptance of words! and above all, ye immortal gods, what an absurd religion! I see bread, the senses report bread to me, there is no suitable, indeed no possible testimony except about bread, and you compel me that in regard to that which in my knowledge is bread, and nothing further, I should be in that attitude of worship, adoration, reverence in which I ought to be toward Jesus made visible? Jesus is or was a man; history testifies this to me. Besides, His divinity has not even a sense for my intellect, and you compel me to behave toward this man, concerning whom whether there is anything above man I not only know nothing but cannot know, as if He were God? Jesus died; of this again there is no possible doubt. But on the other hand, the resurrection of the dead, as regards intelligibility, is equivalent to the squaring of the circle, and you compel me to converse with this dead man, who as far as I am concerned at least has remained among the dead, as with a living man? Bitter is the present life, and full of many sorrows; yet it has certain sweetnesses from which a certain austere prescription of the law, as they commonly call it, forbids us. But on the other hand, the future life, whether it exists and of what kind it is, is always found in the same sphere of agnosticism. What then shall I do, wretched man, who would not abdicate present things for the sake of a vain hope or fear of future things? But behold, the philosophy of action provides you with a solution. Act thus, live thus, as if there were a future life, in which both rewards for the good and punishments for the wicked have been established.

You see therefore nihilism brought to its ultimate limit in moral dogmatism. For in truth I would as reasonably take the rule of action from some novelistic fable as from the gospel. Nor does it help if you say that, although in the dogma as it is in our intellect there is no reason legitimating the practice, there can yet be one in the underlying reality, unknown indeed to us, but known to God revealing. For, passing over other considerations now, moral dogmatism knows no more about God, and especially about the revelation of God, than about the rest. « It is wont to be said that God has spoken. But what does the word to speak mean in this case? Most certainly it is a metaphor, and what is the reality that is covered under this metaphor? » No one knows⁷. Whence nothing remains but the vital effort of the human mind. For they say that unless we wish absurdly to transmute religion into a logical entity or metaphysical abstraction, we must introduce into it the notion of motion and life, so that dogma is conceived as something living, all whose principles are immanent to man.

It remains therefore for us to show what kind of animal that living faith finally is. And this we shall take care to do by reporting the words and sentences of the author who has taken upon himself the task of popularizing whatever was devised among the rationalists of the century just past concerning the origins, growth, progresses, past and future metamorphoses of this singular animal. That indeed in the chapter that follows.