“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.  Well, when the Religious Houses were destroyed in England the State had to do their work.  You could not simply flog beggars out of existence, as Elizabeth tried to do.  Then the inevitable happened, and it began to be a mark of disgrace to be helped by the State in a workhouse:  people often preferred to starve.  Then at the beginning of the twentieth century a well-meant attempt was made, in the Old-Age Pensions and George’s State Insurance Act, to remedy this and to help the poor in a manner that would not injure their self-respect.  Of course that failed, too.  It is incredible