e two
periods, in the first place, because it is impossible to understand
the later without an understanding of the earlier doctrine from which
it developed, and secondly, because of the widespread prevalence, even
among Catholics, of the erroneous idea that the scholastic teaching
was opposed to the ethical principle laid down by the Founder of
Christianity.

[Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, p. 73.]

Amongst the arguments which are advanced by socialists none is more
often met than the alleged socialist teaching and practice of the
early Christians. For instance, Cabet's _Voyage en Icarie_ contains
the following passage: 'Mais quand on s'enfonce serieusement et
ardemment dans la question de savoir comment la societe pourrait etre
organisee en Democratie, c'est-a-dire sur les bases de l'Egalite et de
la Fraternite, on arrive a reconnaitre que cette organisation exige
et entraine necessairement la communaute de biens. Et nous hatons
d'ajouter que cette communaute etait egalement proclamee par
Jesus-Christ, par tous ses apotres et ses disciples, par tous les
peres de l'Eglise et tous les Chretiens des premiers siecles.' The
fact that St. Thomas Aquinas, the great exponent of Catholic teaching
in the Middle Ages, defends in unambiguous language the institution of
private property offers no difficulties to the socialist historian of
Christianity. He replies simply that St. Thomas wrote in an age when
the Church was the Church of the rich as well as of the poor; that
it had to modify its doctrines to ease the consciences of its rich
members; and that, ever since the conversion of Constantine, the
primitive Christian teaching on property had been progressively
corrupted by motives of expediency, until the time of the _Summa_,
when it had ceased to resemble in any way the teaching of the
Apostles.[1] We must therefore first of all demonstrate that there is
no such contradiction between the teaching of the Apostles and that of
the mediaeval Church on the subject of private property, but that,
on the contrary, the necessity of private property was at all times
recognised and insisted on by the Catholic Church. As it is put in an
anonymous article in the _Dublin Review_: 'Among Christian nations we
discover at a very early period a strong tendency towards a general
and equitable distribution of wealth and property among the whole body
politic. Grounded on an ever-increasing historical evidence, we might
possibly affirm that the mediae