Now, two such qualities and tendencies of humanity, acting in an especial manner, or, in other words, more powerfully and universally than ever before, rule over and exalt our age. He who should say that these two tendencies, naturally common to all men, all times, and all places, had become the passions of the age, and even its most ardent passions, would express our ideas on this subject, and give an adequate description of the times in which we live.
Liberty, then, and union, are the cry from every quarter, the thought, desire, hope, strength, and occupation of all intellects, of all classes, of everything that belongs to man, from the highest to the lowest. Trades, business, and commerce cry aloud for liberty, and for union with liberty. The free co-operation of the industrial arts and workmen's societies, of societies of merchants and banking-houses, are ideas and facts so common in these days that the dominion of the two tendencies referred to above is clearly made manifest in the lower order of civilization. And this order, quickened by such ideas and making use of such aids, becomes the instrument of new liberty and still greater union. Thus, the power of steam triumphing over the obstacles of matter, and the speed of electricity overcoming the resistance of space and time, favor the free expansion of nation toward nation, and make, I might almost say, one single society out of the most distant nations.
Rising from this lower order of civilization, the industries of every kind, to what is far nobler, that of science, we observe the same aspirations, perhaps more universally diffused and more passionate in degree toward liberty and union. Freedom of thought, freedom of education, freedom of speech and of the press, seem to be the idols of the day; for, strange to say, freedom of the intellectual life is deemed by very many not as the dowry of science, but the fundamental principle of all human instruction. There exists, also, with this desire for intellectual freedom, a craving after union. Scientific congresses, either general or confined to some particular branch of knowledge, succeed each other at no distant intervals, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, so as to unite men of intellect whom distance of space had kept asunder. The literary journals, whose number is so great as to excite amazement, have become the arena for the free diffusion of thought; they keep alive the work of the scientific congresses, and spread its knowledge—spreading it in such a manner as to complete the intellectual union of the human race, by making the speculations of the great men of science familiar to the most ordinary intellects.
Turning our gaze from the industrial and intellectual to the moral life, that is to say, to the life of society, the two aspirations appear stronger and more manifest; so strong and manifest that we might be tempted to call them insane and mischievous. To the cry of liberty, the civilized nations of earth respond with transport, and rise in rebellion against whatever can be shown to be in any way opposed to freedom. Never in previous times were such social changes witnessed, so unexpected, so general, so profound, and carried through with so much enthusiasm, as those just enacted and initiated with the cry of liberty. The political organization of nations, the administrative control of provinces and municipalities, have all been regulated by the principle of free election, freedom of vote and opinion. The slavery of man to man, a lamentable relic of paganism, has been abolished in many places by legal enactment, and is universally looked on with more repugnance than heretofore. After the hard-fought battles in North America on the question of slavery, the negroes there have been raised to the dignity of freemen.
No less vigorous and resistless has been the tendency toward social union. The principle of nationality has traversed all Europe with the rapidity of lightning, kindling as it passed the minds of men, exciting and agitating them in a wonderful manner. Even as we write, the cry for unions still more comprehensive—the union of races—strikes upon our ears.
It is, then, an indisputable fact, a fact whose evidence is clear to all and is admitted by all, that the aspirations of our age are towards union and liberty.
We shall therefore hail the council as the final goal of these aspirations of the human race. And yet, in saying this, we have not stated all that the council implies; for it serves also to satisfy an essentially human want that equals those twofold aspirations, or, to speak more correctly, is still stronger and more universal than they. What, then? Shall it be said that the aspirations and wants of the human mind are not directed to the same object? Most assuredly; the end, but not the immediate object, is the same. They proceed from different impulses: the one arises from the tendencies of the age, but without any regard to the good or evil qualities inherent in such tendencies; the other is the result of a vice that modifies and corrupts such tendencies, a vice that may prove fatal to nations, alluring them by the cry of liberty and union to slavery and desolation. The want we refer to argues a vice to be corrected, an infirmity to be healed, a danger to be shunned, express it as we will; but let us not deny the fact, a most sad and painful one, for which the council furnishes a sovereign and most efficacious remedy.
But what, it will be asked, is this vice which degrades the noble aspirations for liberty and union, and causes such misery to nations? It is the rejection of authority—a rejection absolute and unlimited, that has penetrated into every relation of human life. The better, however, to make our sentiments clear on this subject, and to bring under consideration, not the existence of such a vice, but the cause that produced it, we must trace the question back to its source.
The fundamental dogma of the Protestant Reformation gave birth at the same instant to a double negation—the rejection of liberty and of union—so that the servitude of the human will and individualism were exalted to the dignity of a principle. It seems like a contradiction that the basis of Protestantism, namely, private interpretation, which is the rejection of a supreme authority, should have led in its consequences to servitude. But the contradiction disappears when we reflect that so necessary is authority to man that he will bow to fatalism or force if he has no legitimate authority to which to turn. History bears evidence that two centuries and a half of debasing servitude and cruel separations followed. Such a long period of slumber must necessarily have had an awakening; for the innate tendencies of humanity may for a time grow faint or dormant, but they can never be extinguished. Moreover, should they, for any length of time, be checked in their natural expansion, this necessity grows to gigantic proportions, till it sweeps before it every obstacle like a torrent in its impetuous course. Such was the result to be expected, and which really took place, at the close of the eighteenth century. But the minds of men having been seduced by the sophistries of the Reformation, the new era of liberty and union must of necessity reflect its deceitful philosophy. Therefore, liberty and union, when they arose, cast aside the principle of authority, as Protestantism had done at its first appearance. Liberty rejected religion to become atheistical, and fraternity or union affiliated itself to pantheism.