spiritual vision. It seeks a Theoria—an intuition of reality which is expressed in metaphysical thought and bears fruit in artistic creation and moral action. Thus Chinese civilisation culminates in the metaphysical vision of cosmic law and in the ethical ideal of the Confucian just m a n ; Indian civilisation in the metaphysical vision of absolute being and in the moral ideal of the Sadhu; and Hellenic civilisation in the vision of the intelligible world and in the ethical ideal of the philosopher.
In Christianity the idea of spiritual order acquires a yet wider and more profound significance. It is based upon the belief in a divine society which transcends all states and cultures and is the final goal of humanity.
For as a modern Thomist has written, ” The human personality is not entirely contained in political society; it belongs above all by its innermost and truest being, by its spiritual element, to another and more perfect society, to the universality of being, the World-Whole which includes the living Infinite, God Himself, as its Universal Good and Sovereign Head ; and political society, however wide and numerous it may be, is but a minute section of this immense and innumerable Republic,” *
* T. Bésiade, La Justice générale, in Mélanges thiomistes, 1 923, p. 334
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this city of God of which St. Augustine and St. Thomas speak. This society exists in the nature of things as ” the republic of all men under the law of God,” * although the actual disorder of human nature prevented its effective realisation by man. It has therefore been re-constituted on a higher plane by the Incarnation, through which mankind is united in a direct and personal relation with the Divine Word. And this new unity is something more than a society; it is an organism, a living body whose head is Christ the Word and whose vital principle is the Divine Spirit. ” But this great society is not yet m a d e ; it is in the making— in process of becoming—it grows under the guidance of Christ, Whose mystical Body has not yet attained its full stature, to its immanent perfection, that is to say, to the perfect possession of God; it is a universal gravitation towards God ‘ Who turns all things to the love of Himself.’ …
” And it depends on us to push the universe with all our powers towards its sublime destiny, to contribute in our degree and for our part to the promotion and perfection of the kingdom of God.” §
If this is the idea that should inspire * St. Thomas, Sum. Th. i-ii, q. 100, a. 5.
§ Besiade, op. cit., p. 340.
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Christian culture, it may well be asked whether a Christian civilisation has ever existed. It is surely not to be found in the theocratic absolutism of the Byzantine East, nor in the feudal barbarism of the mediaeval West, nor in the humanism of the Renaissance. Yet through all their manifold imperfections each of them has aspired to it in their fashion, and if our own civilisation is to recover a spiritual principle, it is here that we must seek it. The essential achievement of our culture—the conquest of material order—is not, as we have seen, inconsistent w i t h this ideal. In fact it may be regarded as its natural complement, for the restoration of man to his true position as the master of nature and the organiser of the material world, which is the function of science, corresponds in the natural order to the spiritual restoration of human nature in itself, which is the work of Christianity in the supernatural order.
In a Christian civilisation the scientific order would no longer offer, as it does at present, the tragic spectacle of vast resources of power and intelligence devoted to producing unsightly and unnecessary objects and to endowing mankind with new means of self-destruction; it would become an instrument for the realisation of man’s true destiny as the orderer of material 108
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things to spiritual ends. And so, too, with regard to the international aspects of our civilisation. Without spiritual order the cosmo-politanism of modern culture does not make for peace ; it merely increases the opportunities of strife. It destroys all that is best and most distinctive in the local and national cultures, while leaving the instincts of national and racial hostility to develop unchecked. It unites mankind in the common enjoyment of the cinema and the Ford car and the machine gun without creating any spiritual unity. The recovery of the Christian idea of order would give a spiritual expression to the universality of modern culture. Its material unification would become subservient to the ideal of the spiritual unity of mankind in justice and charity, an ideal that has a very real attraction for the modern mind, but which secular idealism is powerless to achieve.
We must make our choice between the material organisation of the world—based either on economic exploitation or on an economic absolutism, which absorbs the whole of life and leaves no room for human values—and the Christian ideal of a spiritual order based on spiritual faith and animated by charity, which is the spiritual will. The triumph of such an ideal in a world that seems governed only by 109
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material forces and distracted by hatred and greed may seem a fantastic dream, but is it any more hopeless than the enterprise of that handful of unknown and uneducated men from a remote Oriental province who set out to conquer the imperial power of Rome and the intellectual culture of Hellenism ? In history it is often the incredible that happens— credo quia impossibile has been justified again and again. Sooner or later it is inevitable that men’s minds should turn once more in search of spiritual reality, and when once the tide begins to flow all the sand-castles that we have built during the ebb disappear.
Every Christian mind is a seed of change so long as it is a living mind, not enervated by custom or ossified by prejudice. A Christian has only to be in order to change the world, for in that act of being there is contained all the mystery of supernatural life. It is the function of the Church to sow this divine seed, to produce not merely good men, but spiritual men— that is to say, supermen. In so far as the Church fulfils this function it transmits to the world a continuous stream of spiritual energy.
If the salt itself loses its savour, then indeed the world sinks back into disorder and death, for a despiritualised Christianity is powerless to change anything; it is the most abject of 110
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failures, since it serves neither the natural nor the spiritual order. But the life of the Church never fails, since it possesses an infinite capacity for regeneration. It is the external organ through which the Spirit enters the social process and builds up a new humanity— populus qui nascetur quern fecit Dominus. The spirit breathes and they are created and the face of the earth is renewed.
T H E END
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
BY
CHRISTOPHER DAWSON
PROGRESS
AND RELIGION