To demand physical proof for every article of belief was as fantastic as to demand, let us say, a chemical proof of the beauty of a picture, or evidence in terms of light or sound for the moral character of a friend, or mathematical proof for the love of a mother for her child.

This very elementary idea seems to have come like a thunderclap upon many who claimed the name of 'thinkers'; for it entirely destroyed a whole artillery of arguments previously employed against Revealed Religion.
"For a time, Pragmatism came to the rescue from the philosophical camp; but the assault was but a very short one; since, tested by Pragmatic methods (that is, the testing of the truth of a religion by its appeal to human consciousness), if one fact stood out luminous and undisputed, it was that the Catholic Religion, with its eternal appeal in every century and to every type of temperament, was utterly supreme.
"Let us turn to another point----" (Mr.Manners lifted the glass he had been twirling between his fingers, and drank it off with an appearance of great enjoyment.
Then he smacked his lips once or twice and continued.) "Let us turn to the realm of politics--even to the realm of trade.
"Socialism, in its purely economic aspect, was a well-meant attempt to abolish the law of competition--that is, the natural law of the Survival of the Fittest.

It was an attempt, I say; and it ended, as we know, in disaster; for it established instead, so far as it was successful, the law of the Survival of the Majority, and tyrannized first over the minority and then over the individual.
"But it was a well-meant attempt; since its instinct was perfectly right, that competition is not the highest law of the Universe.

And there were several other ideals in Socialism that were most commendable in theory: for example, the idea that the Society sanctifies and safeguards the individual, not the individual the Society; that obedience is a much-neglected virtue, and so forth.
"Then, suddenly almost, it seems to have dawned upon the world that all the _ideals_ of Socialism (apart from its methods and its dogmas) had been the ideals of Christianity; and that the Church had, in her promulgation of the Law of Love, anticipated the Socialist's discovery by about two thousand years.

Further, that in the Religious Orders these ideals had been actually incarnate; and that by the doctrine of Vocation--that is by the freedom of the individual to submit himself to a superior--the rights of the individual were respected and the rights of the Society simultaneously vindicated.
"A very good example of all this is to be found in the Poor-law system.
"You remember that before the Reformation, and in Catholic countries long after, there was no Poor-law system, because the Religious Houses looked after the sick and needy.