书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
35302100001122

第1122章

[15] "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, p. 245. - The same judgment is confirmed by the Rev. T. W. Allies, in a "Journal d'un voyage en France," 1848, p. 291. "The dogma of the real presence is the centre of the whole religious life of the Church (Catholic): it is the secret support of the priest in his mission, so painful and so filled with abnegation. It is by this that the religious orders are maintained."[16] This question is examined by St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica.

[17] For the past twenty years, owing to the researches of psychologists and physiologists, we have begun to know something of the subterranean regions of the mind and the latent processes taking place there. The storing, the residue and unconscious combination of images, the spontaneous and automatic transformation of images into sensations, the composition, disassociations and splitting into dual personalities of the ego, the alternate or simultaneous coexistence of two, or more than two, distinct persons in the same individual, the suggestions accomplished later and at fixed dates, the chock of the return from the inside to the outside, and the physical effect on the nervous extremities of the mental sensations, all these late discoveries have resulted in a new conception of mind, and psychology, thus renewed, throws a sharp light on history.

[18] See in "Herodiade," by Flaubert, the depicting of these "kingdoms of the world or of the century," as they appeared to Palestinian eyes in the first century. For the first four centuries we must consider, confronting the Church, by way of contrast and in full relief, the pagan and Roman world, the life of the day, especially in the baths, at the circus, in the theatre, the gratuitous supplies of food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the working classes, the diminution of free laborers, the exhaustion of slaves, depopulation and impoverishment, at the end the colon attached to his glebe, the workman to his tool, the curiale to his curie, the administrative interference of the centralized State, its fiscal exigencies, all that it sucked out of the social body, and the more strenuously inasmuch as there was less to be sucked out of it. Against these sensual habits and customs and this economic system the Church has preserved its primitive aversion, especially on two points, in relation to the theatre and to loaning money at interest.

[19] See St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, ch. I., 26 to 32; also the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. XIII.

[20] The First Epistle of John, II. 16.

[21] Acts of the Apostles, ch. IV.,32, 34 and 35.

[22] I cannot help but conclude that the two world wars, started by Christian Governments, led to socialism and religious decay. How large a role television played in removing the need for clerical guidance and comfort is hard to determine, the fact is that the Churches in Europe stand mostly empty and Taine's description fits rather will on today's society. (SR.)[23] Saint Athanasius, the principal founder of Christian metaphysics, did not know Latin and learned it with great difficulty at Rome when he came to defend his doctrine. On the other hand, the principal founder of western theology, Saint Augustin, had only an imperfect knowledge of Greek.

[24] For example, the three words which are essential and technical in metaphysical speculations on the divine essence, have no real equivalent in Latin, while the words by which an attempt is made to render these terms, verbum, substantia, persona, are very inexact. Persona and substantia, in Tertullian, are already used in their Roman sense, which is always juridical and special.

[25] Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "Ancient Law," p. 354. The following is profound in a remarkable degree: " Greek metaphysical literature contained the sole stock of words and ideas out of which the human mind could provide itself with the means of engaging in the profound controversies as to the Divine Persons, the Divine Substance, and the Divine Natures. The Latin language and the meager Latin philosophy were quite unequal to the undertaking, and accordingly the western or Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them."[26] Maine, "Ancient Law," p.357 "The difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law." Out of this arose the Western controversies on the subject of Free-will and Divine Providence. "The problem of Free-will arises when we contemplate a metaphysical conception under a legal aspect."[27] Ibid. "The nature of Sin and its transmission by inheritance; the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction; the necessity and sufficiency of the Atonement; above all the apparent antagonism between Free-will and the Divine Providence-these were the points which the West began to debate as ardently as ever the East had discussed the articles of its more special creed." This juridical fashion of conceiving theology appears in the works of the oldest Latin theologians, Tertullian and Saint Cyprian.