Society And its Purpose
Book 3 - Determining the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 15
How Christianity brought back to life irremediably lost civil societies
451. In such circumstances, while the civil institutions of antiquity were in their death throes, Christianity appeared on earth. This new cause modified everything human. Humanity, which had previously begun to experience convulsions almost as a result of the powerful remedies to which it had subjected itself, immediately set out on a new course.
The Christian institution, fully conscious of what it was doing, presented itself to disconsolate humanity under the title of Gospel (euangelion), that is, good news. It promised nothing less than total renewal: `Behold, all things are made new.’(195) And by maintaining its great promises it fully justified the title it had given itself. After two thousand years, we are its judges; we can see its work in a world renewed; we behold these Christian societies not only reborn but characterised by a kind of immortality; they stand firm against every kind of adversity and progress along the path to unending civilisation. Christianity, a giant now, continues to draw everything to itself, leading in its triumphal march and uniting to itself the last portions of mankind, however far they may have wandered.
This is the fact. We must now analyse it and explain, as far as we can, the way in which Christianity came to the aid of humanity on the brink of destruction, and raised its civil assemblies from the dead. We shall endeavour to do this by insisting on the general principles we have already established.
452. The civil societies of antiquity perished because the collective will of the masses determined the proximate end of society, which it posited successively in different kinds of good. Finally, it set this proximate end in physical pleasure which of its nature has no intellective element and exists as something essentially individual, not social.
When the will of the masses came to have no other object of desire than voluptuousness, the movement of the human mind had to slow down until finally it stopped altogether.(196) Intelligence died because the will no longer presented it with an object that required its exercise. The will died with the intelligence because in its turn it was concentrating on the most limited of all objects, an object which properly speaking did not require the use of the will, an intellective power — the instinct peculiar to animal nature was enough for physical desires. Civil communities, which cannot exist without a certain use of intelligence amongst its members, necessarily ceased.
Any remedy for such an immense, disastrous fall had to consist, therefore, in finding some means of conserving intellectual and volitive movement. This could be done only by drawing and attracting these powers with some totally new good, suitable for re-establishing their activity.
453. This new good did not exist, however, in nature or in society. Mankind had already experienced all kinds of natural and social good, and seen whether any of them could bring lasting contentment. Long experience had simply convinced human beings that nothing existed which possessed in itself the power they sought. First, human beings had been bound together in society and content to preserve their social existence. When this had been assured, their hearts looked for something more.
A gigantic dream of power and glory shone before their eyes. Their heart rejoiced, and they were certain that happiness would come once glory and power had been attained. Next, the society to which they belonged became powerful and dominant. At this point, citizens of illustrious nations heard another, totally reasonable voice which assured them, from within, that power, even the greatest power, was useless without wealth. They then sought to enhance satisfaction with riches. When the State and individuals grew extremely rich, it was even easier to see that wealth is an imaginary good if it does not bring real enjoyment to those who possess it. Surely nothing could be more reasonable and obvious than this? So, humanity finished by persuading itself that ultimately the only possible real good was pleasure. Power, glory and wealth became infantile illusions in the eyes of mankind; and once seen as the terrible illusions they actually were, they could no longer deceive human beings who, in any case, had already succumbed to voluptuousness.
Take any people which has reached a point where it sees no reality in glory, power and wealth, a people which sees reality only in material pleasure. Try to arouse generous sentiments in them or try to stimulate them to magnanimous undertakings, even for the public good. They will mock your simplicity, and imagine that their ideas are much more advanced than yours. `These are all beautiful things’, you will be told by such consummate philosophers, `all beautiful things, but we have heard them too often. The exaggerated austerity of the virtue you propose is nothing more than a beautiful dream. But the time for images has passed. Today we want things that can be touched and seen.’
454. Humanity, therefore, ruined by its disillusionment with deceitful phantasy and empty hope, and convinced that there is no real good beyond that which strikes the chords of the senses, can no longer desire to abandon what is real in order to return to what it has already acknowledged as illusory. It is not true that pleasure makes humanity happy; on the contrary, it torments it and tears it apart. Nevertheless, pleasure is real, and as such undeniably different from other goods already experienced by humanity. Moreover, pleasure inebriates, stupefies and attracts instincts and habits which then change into insuperable necessities. A ruined people might want at this stage to cast off its bondage, but cannot. It is bound with chains stronger than any power it may possess. Casting off the forces of intelligence, it continually loses the very power which it should use to break its bonds. Subject to such a necessary law of miserable progress towards evil, the people is ever more fixed and confirmed in its desperately unhappy state. If Christianity, therefore, is to be capable of saving civil society, it must do nothing less than preserve the intelligence which was perishing as mankind lost the proximate power to use it.
455. We must see how Christianity began this work. We must see how the Gospel preserved the use of intelligence which was rapidly diminishing amongst the peoples; how it proposed to the human will the new, non-illusory good of which we spoke — a good as real as physical pleasure and which, besides possessing a reality capable of attracting human beings already stupefied by illusion, would also be suitable for setting their understanding in great, perpetual motion.
456. In effect, Christianity announced a new fact, indicated in the word Gospel. This was the good at which humanity was to aim as the unique scope of all its activity. This good, announced to all by Christianity, would not originate in this world. It was indicated as something far beyond this life, something perfect, the reward of perfect virtue. Christianity spoke of this good as totally real, complete, infinite, everlasting; it spoke of temporal life and its benefits as vain, as illusions of the imagination, just as the world thought them — and if indeed they were real, as physical pleasure is, still vain because instantaneous, uncertain, mingled with suffering and incapable of satisfying intelligent beings, whose hearts long for something absolute and infinite.
457. Even the proclamation of such sublime teachings, so opposed in part to ordinary feelings and certainly to ordinary tendencies, was already a great step ahead. The world had never heard such language. Nevertheless, it was not enough to change minds and hearts. If this new school was to bring about real effects in societies, in humanity, it had to do something more: it had to convince people to believe truly in such sublime and extraordinary statements, and believe with a persuasion stronger than every other prior persuasion and conviction, stronger than every developed passion and inveterate habit. In other words, Christianity’s declarations put a stop to all that human beings thought and did about good and evil; it condemned their most tenacious affections and dearest customs which by now were second nature to them.
Getting the world to believe speculatively in such severe, absolute and decisive teachings was itself an enormous and apparently hopeless task, but this was nothing compared to requirements in the practice of everyday life, a field in which humanity’s constant endeavour had never exceeded video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor [The better things I see and approve, but I follow the worse]. It is true that no one, however evil, totally loses synderesis. Nevertheless, the principles inscribed in this internal codex of the heart remain inoperative; they are too much for our weakness, and unhappy irritants to our malice. Even if the new school had succeeded through some prodigious effort in rooting its inexorable declarations in the mind and faith of human beings, people would still have been free to practise or mock these affirmations. The most difficult part was still to be achieved: Christianity had to provide those truths, which concerned matters beyond visible nature, with a practical force that would truly draw people to follow them. This, however, was impossible unless individuals renewed themselves from top to bottom and, as it were, annihilated their previous life and themselves by taking on a new life, a new being. It is a source of even greater wonder that the new school, although cognisant of all these difficulties, neither hesitated nor drew back. It even claimed, and said clearly, that human beings would be born anew;(197) they would have to be remade not only in their minds, but in their inmost hearts. They would have to be recreated.(198)
458. This sublime, inner certainty, this language full of power,(199) distinguished Christianity from all the schools of the philosophers who despaired of achieving anything with the masses. The distinction was as great as that between the divine and the human. Another characteristic separating the Gospel from philosophies is that the Gospel did not require one or other virtue from human beings while closing its eyes to other virtues. It required virtue whole and entire, free from every vice without exception or dispensation. It reduced to practice the great principle that `good admits no defect in itself; good with a single defect is no longer good, but evil in human beings.’(200) This was the condition underlying the promise of imperishable bliss.
The third distinct element of the school of the Gospel is that it does not appeal solely to the intellect. While it commands human assent to the great mysteries which it teaches in the name of God,(201) it also declares that human beings should conform all the actions of their life to its teachings. In such a situation, the intellect appears to take second rather than first place in this new school. It is no longer reasoning, but faith, affection and action that is required from us.
Finally, the fourth characteristic of the Christian way of life is to reach out to all. It is not content with calling the few who are able to dedicate themselves to scientific speculation; it wants to save all without distinction of profession, natural talents, age, sex, education, race, language or degree of culture.
459. History and everyday life witness that persons marked by all these differences heard the word of the new teachers, responded to the call, believed the sublime thoughts, and did so with force sufficient to renew their own opinions, ways of life and activity in accordance with these notions. Believers were able to die courageously for the sake of these ideals with a heroism greater than that of the Romans at their finest moments and in their greatest battles. Whatever way we wish to explain the matter, it is an obvious, undeniable fact that the Church of JESUS Christ was acclaimed extensively as mistress of the nations, and that debilitated peoples stretched out their arms to her as a child to its mother’s breast. Isaiah had seen this Church eight centuries previously and had addressed her with these words:
Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;
break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who have not been in travail!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of her that is married, says the Lord.
Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains be stretched out;
Hold not back, lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes,
For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,
and your descendants will possess the nations
and will people the desolate cities.(202)
These last words depict in vivid colours the salvation of collapsing societies. Nevertheless, what we have said still does not explain this marvel. We noted that Christianity, in order to come to the aid of dying society, had `to preserve in peoples the use of their moribund intelligence.’ How did Christianity achieve such an effect?
460. I confess, and every reasonable person will have to admit with me, that in all this there is something inexplicable, something superior to nature. It is absolutely outside the powers and reasoning of human beings to explain `how people could have suddenly come to believe, and believe with unconquerable faith, in the most mysterious dogmas and the strictest norms contained in the Gospel.’ I neither wish, nor am able to explain, nor do I believe, that others can explain this except by appealing to the hidden power which the author of the Gospel has over the very souls of human beings. But leaving this aside, and granted living faith in the proclaimed teachers — as we see before our eyes — it is not difficult to explain all the beneficial consequences arising for humanity and society from the Gospel. In particular, we have an explanation for the wonderful preservation and resurrection of the use of intelligence in nations. Intelligence, flickering and dying, was rekindled as a sacred, everlasting fire in the midst of the nations, a fire from which the intellect of individuals and peoples could be reactivated and reinflamed.
461. No object on which the intellective power can exercise itself, if it wishes to do so, is sufficient to maintain this power in movement. In fact, human intelligence can never lack matter; any natural object is capable of exercising our thought limitlessly. Every idea of the mind, even the least fertile, can serve as a starting point for indefinite reasoning provided that intellective activity is sufficient to deduce it and the human heart wants to do this. But the intellect, if it is to stay in motion, must be activated by some stimulus. In a word, it is necessary for the will to really move the understanding. But the will cannot want to do this unless it finds the movement of the intellect necessary to obtain the good in which it believes and to which it tends. What would have happened, therefore, if mankind, instead of believing firmly in the bliss promised by Christianity to the practice of perfect virtue, had replied: `I still do not see this bliss. How am I to know that it also is not an illusion?’, and had surrendered to doubt? In this case, it would have been impossible for the Gospel to have preserved the intelligence in the requisite perpetual activity. The Gospel would never have interested the will which, remaining inert, would not have provided the human understanding with the necessary impetus.
462. The opposite was true when the will, persuaded of the word preached to it, found that the bliss proposed had necessarily become its most important object, which it had to contemplate uninterruptedly with the eyes of its intellect. I mention the `contemplating eyes of the intellect’ because, I repeat, Christianity did not begin by commanding reasoning, a tiring, restless activity. It invited all to contemplation, the natural effect of faith, an activity full of sweetness, light and peace. So the new good, the new intellective object, was launched once and for all into the world of spirits; it was of such a kind that it contained in itself and required the most fruitful and lasting act of the intellect. We can be convinced of this if we apply the rules which, according to what we have said, enable us to note the intellective fecundity of any object proposed to the will.(203) We shall find that no natural good to which the associated masses of peoples tend at the different stages of society’s development has as much power for good as that newly put forward by Christianity; none of them is such a powerful cause of intellectual development.
463. First, we indicated that greater spirituality in the object of the intellect demands greater use of the intelligence. The reason for this is clear: only the intelligence can conceive spiritual objects that do not fall under the senses. The bliss proposed by Christianity is principally spiritual, and its object is invisible to the eyes of the body. To turn towards this object with affection, human beings had necessarily to make great use of pure intelligence. Moreover, the object of that bliss is the conjunction of human creatures with God. This is done essentially through the intellect which is totally filled with the infinite Being who becomes its light and its form. The mode of such bliss, as taught by Christianity, is supremely intellectual.
I added that the object of Christian bliss is light and vital form to the intellect (such is the way in which Christian doctrine describes God) and that the intellect is able to absorb more and more of this infinite object without ever, of itself, grasping it all. The understanding finds in that object a totally inexhaustible pasture of its own, and from its ever-living and reborn desire to possess it better and more fully (because even in this life it can be possessed) is continually spurred to broaden and distend itself in order to be more suitable for sharing in God. Hence the Supreme good is proposed to humanity by the Gospel as an unending spring of intellectual life. Believers have here an infinite stimulus to make ever greater use of their intellective powers by drawing on new truths, and discovering new fields of light in the contemplation of the infinite essence. These truths, far from satisfying the intellect, sharpen its sublime and most pure desire of knowledge.
464. Let us also apply to the object of the will of the Christian masses the four characteristics which mark out the good whose acquisition and fruition requires greater use of intelligence. As we saw, these are number, space, time and abstraction. Greater use of intelligence is needed where, in order to enjoy the desired good, it is necessary for the mind to pass through a greater number of things, through greater space and time, and rise to more elaborate abstractions. But the good proposed to human beings by Christianity necessarily involves the greatest number, the greatest space, the greatest time and the greatest abstraction. Let us see how.
465. First, this good is the Being who is author of the world, the principle of every number, time, space and abstraction. He is greater than all these things and contains them in himself eminently.
466. Second, relative to number, human beings, while living on earth, cannot know the Almighty except by differentiating his perfections and qualities which, as a result, are multiplied indefinitely in the human mind. Equally, there is no limit of any sort to the multiple acts with which God is seen to rule the universe nor to the profound reasons, some clear, some hidden, of his Providence. Under this aspect, the history of all the things composing the universe is the history of divine dispensations;(204) the facts of nature — its quantity, origin, work and decline — all enter into the contemplation of the Supreme author and creator.
The same is true about the means by which, according to Catholic teaching, such an end is attained: these means are infinite in number. Because God, the object of bliss, is holy, he loves all good and hates all evil. Humanity, therefore, in giving its attention to these means, is spontaneously preoccupied with perfecting morality; all the virtues, the vices and every sin, even the smallest, and all means of merit become an extremely broad field of investigation for human understanding. Moreover, it is not a question simply of investigating what is lawful for Christian people, but of taking into consideration what is counselled, what is perfect. In other words, there is a tendency to the most sublime heroism.
Another field of careful investigation, which extends further than an enquiry into what pleases the Holy of Holies in everything just and perfect, is the endeavour to know God’s adored will in his positive oracles, in the holy books. This, too, is a perennial source of intelligence for human beings. Who can describe the quality and quantity of intellective light that has been drawn and is being drawn by humanity from the divine books? These books had an immense influence upon ways of life, upon laws and even upon the formation of the languages of modern societies. In a word, God the Almighty, the highest good, who is also the possession itself of all means of acquiring good, was and is the principle of studies which can be multiplied ad infinitum; he was and is the subject-matter of many, many sciences which the world did not have previously. And these branches of knowledge are as sublime in the arguments they treat as they are profound and unlimited in their multiplicity.
467. Third, relative to space, Christianity embraces everything in its fundamental thought, and conquers the immensity of extension. God, present everywhere, makes every place a home for the believer, who finds everywhere the good to which he tends. Christianity fills the universe with its new love. It witnesses to the common origin of all human beings, wherever their homeland, and goes on to call them all to the same inheritance and to the possession of one and the same good. It admits everyone to the same banquet as that enjoyed by the heavenly intelligences, the banquet prepared for his creatures by the One who has drawn them from nothing. Material distances and separation of every kind vanish before Christian charity and wisdom as it searches endlessly for savages in the most inhospitable land and the densest forest. It aims to save them, and bring them to drink of that true good which is not diminished for any individual when enjoyed by many, and which alone is capable of satiating all desire.
468. Fourth, relative to time, it is enough to say that the good proffered by Christianity is not fully possessed until time ends and eternity begins. Again, the series of means with which human beings must attain their end is as long as life itself; not a single link of this chain of good actions can be lacking. Again, just as the individual cannot obtain his end except through a long series of noble acts and after long, generous waiting, so Christianity as a society has a life longer than any empire. As history continues to show, empires pass before Christianity as the generations of humanity pass before the earth, sun and stars in their unalterable course.
469. Finally, there can be no other good of any kind which requires such intellectual abstraction as that proposed to humanity by the Gospel. The Christian rises above nature and purifies his thought of God entirely by the work and effort entailed in abstraction; in virtue of abstraction alone he so characterises the divine Being in his mind that it cannot be confused with any other feelable thing; in virtue of abstraction, the Christian’s worship remains free from every anthropomorphic and idolatrous element as he adores in spirit and in truth. And it is through abstraction again that he distinguishes the reward awaiting him from every other good, the reward which `no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of mortal man conceived.’ This reward, despite its mystery, is altogether certain and clear to the believing soul, which enjoys a foretaste of its sweetness and delights in knowing that the reward is nothing finite, but separate and set apart from all finite things. Moreover, abstraction is in constant use amongst Christian peoples as a result of the interior and totally intellectual life they are called to lead on earth by living here as though they were not here. The believer rises on wings of most pure, regenerated thought, and finally comes to rest in the eternal city, his nest, where subsistent truth and justice shine forth in splendour.
470. We are now able to compare the nature of this extraordinary good put before humanity by the Gospel with every other good that humanity had previously enjoyed: power, wealth and sensual delight. From what we have said, it is clear, that the good possessed by Christians undoubtedly requires greater use of the understanding than the good comprehended by non-Christian peoples. The good to which these peoples aspire calls for only a limited use of intelligence. Moreover, as one human desire after another gives rise to disillusionment, intellective and affective activity amongst the nations continues to be restricted until the use of intelligence is abandoned altogether as peoples finally surrender to physical pleasure. The opposite happens in the case of the new good put forward by the new master. Attainment of this good through merit provokes an unlimited use of intelligence; it is a good which never wears out, grows old or satiates its finder.
Christianity, therefore, preserved the use of intelligence in the nations by infusing them with faith in the good it presented. Once the use of the intelligence has been saved, it is easy to explain how human beings used their own resources in the work of renewal, and even refashioned civil societies in a better way.
471. This explanation is applicable to the collapse and gradual disappearance of nations. The American Indians, for example, see themselves diminishing in number every day, but do not see the means needed to impede their immanent, on-going destruction. They lack the necessary intelligence in act to find means which every European discovers easily, and to persuade themselves to undertake these means. In fact, even the strong persuasion itself impelling human activity depends in great part on the intensity and liveliness of the understanding.
The same reason explains why poverty and servitude are maintained amongst certain races. The misery of endemic poverty amongst peoples is felt severely, but immobile, flaccid intelligence is insufficient to enable them either to find or to want to use the means of rising from that base condition. Hence the great difficulty experienced in curing societies of the plague of slothful beggardliness. Decadent Romans, for example, rotted at their leisure in the most blatant idleness. The pressures of the evils of extreme indigence(205) and vice had no effect upon them. No one could have taught those languid intellects how to rise again. Education of this kind met with such weak intelligence that it could leave no profound, effective impression.
472. The opposite was true in the case of the new ray of divine light which activated the greatest weight of intelligence ever brought to bear in history. It was entirely natural that minds strengthened and actuated by this light should immediately become capable not only of reflecting on their evils, but of seeking remedies and applying them to their own wounds. For centuries, the barbarian hordes swept over the final ruins of Roman society, but in vain: the new, powerful, supernatural intelligence of the conquered triumphed over the conquerors.
The Church stopped those ferocious people in their tracks, made them meek at the height of their destructive victories, and invited them as children into a peaceful, human, holy, immense association. Suddenly conquerors and conquered agreed to set aside their hatred, prejudice and exclusive affections; they chose to reconstruct the world rather than engage in mutual destruction; they founded the modern nations which arose strong and healthy, we may say, from the waters of baptism.
The impulse of motion given by Christianity to the intelligence of peoples can never be halted. Society, therefore, can no longer perish; social progress is assured. Why can this impulse not be halted? — Because the One who first persuaded corrupt mankind of the word of the Gospel said to the redeemed: `Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.’
Notes
(195) St Paul applies this passage to the effects of the gospel preaching (2 Cor 5: 17 [Douai]).
(196) The tiny intellective oscillation which remained during this period was insufficient for the existence of society.
(197) `Truly, truly, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God' (Jn 3: [5]).
(198) `Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of his mouth that we should be a kind of FIRST FRUITS of his CREATURES (James 1: [18]).
(199) `For he was teaching them as one having POWER: and not as the scribes and Pharisees' (Matt 7: [29] Douai).
(200) `For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of it all' (James 2: [10]).
(201) `He who does not believe will be condemned' (Mark 16: [16]).
(202) Is 54: [1–3].
(203) Chap. 14.
(204) The greatest number named in all antiquity is found in the Bible where the Almighty is described as surrounded by a thousand million rejoicing spirits, decies millies centena millia. As far as I know, this was the greatest number mentioned before the coming of Christ. This shows how the idea of God broadened the intelligence of the ancient world far more than any capacity for use of natural things.
(205) Montesquieu rightly says of the Romans during their final days: `Those who were first corrupted by wealth were then corrupted by poverty' (Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains, etc., c. 10).