tion itself. These theories
have received already a shock in the minds of all serious and thinking
men; but the men who think are in every nation a small minority, and it
is necessary to give these theories a public refutation, and bring back
those who do not think, as well as those who do, from the world of
dreams to the world of reality. It is hoped, therefore, that any
apparent want of artistic unity or symmetry in the essay will be
pardoned for the sake of the end the author has had in view.

CHAPTER II.

GOVERNMENT.

Man is a dependent being, and neither does nor can suffice for himself.
He lives not in himself, but lives and moves and has his being in God.
He exists, develops, and fulfils his existence only by communion with
God, through which he participates of the divine being and life. He
communes with God through the divine creative act and the Incarnation
of the Word, through his kind, and through the material world.
Communion with God through Creation and Incarnation is religion,
distinctively taken, which binds man to God as his first cause, and
carries him onward to God as his final cause; communion through the
material world is expressed by the word property; and communion with
God through humanity is society. Religion, society, property, are the
three terms that embrace the whole of man's life, and express the
essential means and conditions of his existence, his development, and
his perfection, or the fulfilment of his existence, the attainment of
the end for which he is created.

Though society, or the communion of man with his Maker through his
kind, is not all that man needs in order to live, to grow, to actualize
the possibilities of his nature, and to attain to his beatitude, since
humanity is neither God nor the material universe, it is yet a
necessary and essential condition of his life, his progress, and the
completion of his existence. He is born and lives in society, and can
be born and live nowhere else. It is one of the necessities of his
nature. "God saw that it was not good for man to be alone." Hence,
wherever man is found he is found in society, living in more or less
strict intercourse with his kind.

But society never does and never can exist without government of some
sort. As society is a necessity of man's nature, so is government a
necessity of society. The simplest form of society is the family--Adam
and Eve. But though Adam and Eve are in many respects equa