Crown might derive its sovereignty logically from God, it received its power through the Church by consecration.

According to the Medieval doctrine, the authority of the State to curtail the liberties of the people, and to interfere with their prescriptive rights, was drawn from a Divine commission conferred sacramentally through the Church, the incorporation of Divine power. The monarch was thus invested with a fictitious infallibility, or the privilege of irresponsibility to those governed.

This system is completely false, it rests on a confusion of moral with effective authority. God cannot communicate sovereignty without contradicting His moral government. If man is a moral being, he is responsible to God; if responsible to God, he must have liberty-that is the faculty of exercising his right. If God has conferred sovereignty, then He has commissioned some men to curtail the liberty of men in general, to impede them in the exercise of their duty; He has impressed a duty on man and interfered with its accomplishment, which is impossible.

From this it follows that effective authority is legitimate and quasi-moral when it guarantees the rights of man, and that it is illegitimate and immoral when it becomes sovereign, that is when it assumes the power to violate those rights.

This is a conclusion at which modern political economists have, I believe, pretty generally arrived. But this conclusion entirely depends on the recognition of God as the basis of right, and of authority, which is its prolongation.

Deny God, and authority rests on force alone; we relapse into despotism. Effective authority disappears in violence, which is not the exercise, but the abuse, of effective authority. Right is without guarantee, for right is not acknowledged.

When the National Assembly drew up its famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, in 1789, " Write the name of God at the head of the declaration," said the Abbé Grégoire, “or you leave them without foundation, and you make right the equivalent of force, you declare not the rights of man, but the right of the strongest, you inaugurate the reign of violence." The Assembly refused. Grégoire was correct in his judgment, and the Reign of Terror proved that rights unbased in God produce an authority which is brute force.

Acknowledge God, and what is the result?

His action on man is purely moral; therefore a theocracy, or a despotism, carried on under His sanction, is impossible morally.

Effective authority is based on necessity for the protection of man's rights, which are themselves dogmatic.

Therefore effective authority is limited in its action to the declaration of the relations between man and man, and to their preservation.

In its own sphere effective authority is legitimate and justifiable. It must be recognized by the conscience as having Divine sanction, because social life has divine sanction; and that sanction extends to it in the same degree as force has been delegated to it, i.e. to the same degree as it is useful.

"The liberty in which we have been created," says Cardinal Bellarmine, "is not in opposition with political submission, but it is in opposition with despotic subjugation, that is, with true and proper servitude. The citizen therefore is governed for his own advantage, not for the advantage of him who governs him."1

1 Bellarmine: De Laicis, lib. ii. c. 7.

CHAPTER VI

THE PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES OF CHRISTIANITY

"Ever fresh, the broad creation,

A Divine improvisation,

From the heart of God proceeds,

A single will, a million deeds."-EMERSON.

The subject of the preceding chapters-The First Hypothesis: There is a First Cause self-existent, absolutely free, the Creator of the world— The motive of creation not necessity nor duty—To be sought in the creation, not in the Creator-The creature is the object of creationThe motive of creation is Love-pure love unmixed with selfishness— Second Hypothesis: God has made man in His image, i.e. with a free will-Man's duty is to distinguish himself, and thus constitute his personality-He cannot do so by denying God-He can only do so by simultaneously distinguishing God and preserving the link between himself and God-This link is love-Recapitulation of the argument.

I

HAVE shewn in the first five chapters that there is an universal antinomy in the world; that man himself, a microcosm, contains all the elements of this antagonism; that conciliation is impossible without the idea of God to harmonize these conflicting elements. I have shewn that without the idea of God as a guarantee for the fidelity of our impressions and the truth of our ideas, there is no certainty on any point, and from beginning to end, all men's reasonings, all men's actions, are irrational. I have shewn that without the idea of God to establish the rights of men dogmatically, those rights have no raison d'être; and I have

shewn that the only authority conceivable by man, if the idea of God be banished, is the authority of force, and that the idea of moral authority is without basis unless God be assumed to found it.

:

I pass now to the first Christian axiom -There is a First Cause, self-existent, absolutely free, the Creator of the world. The world exists and we exist. Why? Because God has willed it. Why has God willed it? On the answer to this question everything depends. It must therefore be considered with care and caution.

Creation is an act of free will, in no way changing the nature of the Absolute Being; for the word creation is used to imply that the idea of production which it involves makes no change in the condition of the Author. Creation being an act of free will, must be the act of a will full of intelligence. Every intelligent and free will supposes a purpose; a purposeless will is blind and fatal.

Liberty acting without motive is no more liberty, it is chance, and chance is another name for ignorance.

If, then, we reject the notion of an ignorant God, which is inconsistent with our hypothesis that He is absolutely free, we are obliged to ask what is the motive of creation. It is evident that the motive of creation must be such as will suit our definition of God.

A preliminary examination of the problem will shew us that the purpose must be sought, not in the idea of the Absolute, but in creation itself.

If we conceive the idea of human motives, it is because we are not absolutely free like the First Principle. We have needs, and the satisfaction of these needs is the motive of our action. But the existence of these needs is a proof of our imperfection. We want something that we have not got, the obtaining of which is necessary to us. But to

the Absolute nothing can be necessary to complete Him; therefore He did not create because the universe was requisite to satisfy any want He felt.

We are subject to moral laws, and are influenced by moral motives. We can obey or disobey the moral rule, but we are obliged to recognize it, and we are unable to change its character. To obey is a duty, and we realize our nature by obedience to the law of right. This law limits us; it is above us. But the Absolute is above law. He is bound by no duty. If the free will of the Absolute assumes the character of goodness, it is by His free act. The distinction between good and evil could not pre-exist before Absolute liberty. As intelligence is before ideas, so is will superior to laws. If the moral order constrained God, the moral order would be God; but then God would be no more free, which is against our hypothesis.

To make this statement clearer, let us suppose God to be the moral law, and see to what consequences we are reduced. Moral order being an intimate necessity, it loses all signification for head and heart. Without a will to institute it, it is an unrealizable abstraction. It is no more moral, for the idea of morality implies the freedom of choice between good and evil, and fatalism reigns over God and men.

Therefore, God did not create the universe from necessity or from duty; and these are the only motives of action inherent in the agent which we can conceive. Either of these suppositions is inconsistent with the idea of an absolutely free God, for a cause acting upon a motive inherent in its nature is not free.

God, then, did not find in Himself any reason for creating. If the reason for creation were to be found in the nature of the Absolute, there would be no creation.

The existence of the world is therefore irrational, for