His unshaken belief in the natural propensity of man to evil and error is sufficient to give him his place. But we must beware of confusing his doctrine with that of the Social Catholics, for, unlike them, he is rather prone to invoke the authority of the Mosaic law, especially the Decalogue, and to take his illustrations from England, which is a Protestant country, or from China or Mohammedan lands. His importance among authorities on social questions is not very great, but his attitude towards Church and clergy was on the whole defiant,[1050] and the plan of reform of which we have just given an outline is very different from that of the Social Catholics.
There was a schism in the school in 1885. The “Unions of Social Peace,” with their organ, La Réforme sociale, have on the whole remained faithful to the programme as outlined in this chapter. The dissenting branch, on the other hand, with M. Demolins and the Abbé de Tourville as leaders, has developed the doctrine on its ultra-individualistic or Spencerian side, so that only in origin can it be regarded as at all connected with the school of Le Play.
The “School of Social Science,” as it is called—at least, that is the name it has given to its review—claims that it is still faithful to the method of the master. It even goes so far as to say that Le Play was ignorant of the full possibilities of this method, and condemns his failure to establish a positive science by means of it. In reality, however, the master’s method has quite a subordinate rôle in the activities of this new school, for the simple reason that it is practically useless except for the production of monographs. The new school arranges its facts according to their natural relations, and attempts to link the study of social science to the study of geographical environment.[1051] The study of environment receives some attention in the works of Le Play himself, but it has assumed much greater importance since then. To give but a single instance, the new school attempts to show how the configuration of the Norwegian fiord, the almost complete absence of arable land, and the consequent recourse to fishing as a means of livelihood, even the very dimensions of their sea-craft, have helped to fix the type of family and even the political and economic constitutions prevalent among the Anglo-Saxon race. In a similar fashion, the vast steppes of central and southern Asia have begotten a civilisation of their own. It is the Historical materialism of the Marxian school reappearing in the more picturesque and more suggestive guise of geographical determinism.[1052]
The new school, however, is not very favourably inclined to Le Play’s programme of social reform, especially its teaching concerning the family. Their aim is not the preservation of the family, but the placing of each child in a position to found a family of his own as soon as possible. Their object is neither family nor communal solidarity, but self-help, not the family group, but the single individual family, not the English, but the American home. Demolins is an ardent believer in the struggle for existence, and no one has ever professed greater contempt for the solidarist doctrine. “Social salvation, like eternal life,” says he, “is essentially a personal affair”—a singularly heterodox declaration, by the way, for if salvation is a purely personal matter of what use is the Church?[1053]
II: SOCIAL CATHOLICISM
The term “Catholic Socialism,” which is occasionally employed as an alternative to the above title, is objected to by the majority of Catholics as being excessively restrictive. The generic term “Christian Socialism” was first employed by a Frenchman, Francis Huet, in a book entitled Le Règne social du Christianisme, published in 1853.[1054]
But at least two other authors, namely, Buchez in his Essai d’un Traité complet de Philosophie au point de vue du Catholicisme et du Progrès (1838-40), and the fugitive Abbé de Lamennais in La Question du Travail (1848), can lay considerable claims to priority in the matter. Buchez was the founder of the Co-operative Association of Producers (1832), and Lamennais outlined a scheme of co-operative banks almost exactly like those afterwards established in Germany by Raiffeisen.[1055]
Present-day Catholicism, however, shows no great desire to honour any of them. The one ambition of these three republicans was to effect a union between the Church and the Revolution.[1056] The most advanced of the Social Catholics of to-day, on the other hand, would be well satisfied could they establish some kind of understanding between the Church and democracy. Such at least is the programme recently laid down by M. Marc Sangnier, the founder of the Sillon.
About the same time we find Monseigneur von Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence, preaching a doctrine which drew its inspiration, not from “the false dogmas of ’89,” but from the institutional life of the Middle Ages, from the guilds and the other corporative associations, which are minutely described by him and his disciples, especially Canon Moufang and the Abbé Hitze. Some such institutional activity was again to form the corner-stone of Social Catholicism.[1057]