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.
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