“Plato by a goodlye similitude declareth,” said Sir Thomas More, “why wise men refraine to medle in the common wealthe. For when they see the people swarme into the streets, and daily wet to the skinne with rayne, and yet cannot persuade them to goe out of the rayne and to take their houses; knowynge wel, that if they should goe out to them they shoulde nothinge prevail, nor wynne ought by it, but with them be wette also in the rayne, they do kepe them selfes within their houses, being content that they be saffe themselves, seinge they cannot remedye the follye of the people.” And so, Plato adds, the wise man “is well content if he can in any way live his life here untainted . . . , and, when the time for his release arrives, take his departure amid bright hopes with cheerfulness and serenity.” To-day, in the countries where it is still possible, more or less, to speak one’s mind, the trouble is this: that while there is surely no ground on which angels are less likely to be ready to tread than the floors of parliaments and chancellories, we for our part are all constrained to rush in, driven no doubt by some kind of epileptic irresponsibility, congenital in human nature; and the upshot is a sort of incessant crossing of the floor of the house of commons; for finding ourselves in violent disagreement with one side we rush incontinent over to the other, where a similar process has been taking place.

You have set me a very difficult problem, which my fifty years study of theology makes me chary of solving. In using the word difficult I do not mean the difficulty of gathering from your long letter with its many anxious repetitions the few points of uncertainty which you wish me to solve. My main difficulty after having gathered the heads of your difficulties is to solve the few difficulties which I have gathered.

Of course I know that you are not a Communist. I know this in spite of the wide-spread opinion that you are a Communist in mind and heart, though not in name. I know that what men and some of your fellow Priests take to be your Communism is your quite rational conviction that many of the alleged refutations of Communism do not refute. Of course you are too good a logician to think that you have proved a man’s opinion to be false merely by showing that the arguments for that opinion are false. A man may bring up wrong arguments to prove that the earth is round. But to show that his arguments are not true does not prove that the world is not round. Hence your refutation of the refutations of Communism does not prove that Communism is right. But still less does your refutation of the common refutations of Communism prove that you are, what many hold you to be—a Communist.

Like most of the problems of modern life that of property is neither purely theoretical nor purely practical. We live in a transitional period in which profound social changes together with changes in the spiritual outlook of mankind have at once divorced legal institutions from their basis in the socio-physical life of men and have set in profound and dynamic movement desires and forces wholly disruptive to the compact life of a traditional social order. The challenge to the Christian thinker is taken up glibly enough at the level of pure theory, but an impatience is growing within the Christian body itself at the failure of theory effectively to modify and to change the system of dynamic disorder under which we live. In particular the defence of traditional property rights can and does lead to attitudes of pugnacious defence not of the traditional but in effect of the existing “order,” while a spirit of understandable but shrill and dangerous exasperation throws its hopes into one, and the most potent, of the forces of disruption. This does at least represent a real force for change rather than a system of hardened arteries through which the life of society cannot flow again; but in espousing the cause of Communism the loss for the Christian is the loss of a Christian mind. What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world for the workers and suffer the loss of his own soul? How terrifying a pedestal!

The general contempt for law and the breakdown in the machinery for enforcing it suggest the need for a reconsideration of the principles which give to law its binding force. The very conditions which must prevail in organised society necessitate a social control which is exercised through law and upon which must rest an orderly arrangement as a groundwork of social peace. Peace in society is dependent on social unity. All things naturally crave peace based on order, and although man is by nature meek lawlessness and inflamed passion are capable of making him the worst of brutes. Hence reason dictates the necessity for rules of conduct to be followed by all. Individual inclination must sometimes be restricted and accommodated to the larger interests of society as a whole. St. Thomas therefore defines law as “a dictate of reason, given and promulgated for the common good by one who has charge of the community.” There are, besides statutory law, properly recognised customs which in defect or written law retain their binding force. The obligatory character of law is derived from the power to legislate vested in the representatives of the people, whose charge it is to make provision for the common interests of the society over which they rule. It is by legislation that just relationship is established between members of the state; and as all legislation should be dictated by justice and gives rise to reciprocal rights and duties, every just law has an ethical value. But a law which is unjust is no law, and does not merit obedience.

“Le Silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie,” wrote Pascal.

Around us the miracle of nature towers heavenward under the huge pyramid of subordinated and interlocked beings. “Combien de royaumes nous ignorent!” But ourselves are introverted, egocentric. Even our earth readily becomes for us the core of the world about which the stars circle in a vast illusion.

It is the biggest contribution of Thomism to our lifethought that it tears us away from that little shrunken vision. We lift up our eyes to the eternal hills which surround us everywhere. Every rock, crystal, tree, flower, bird, is an “eternal hill” for those in whom the light of the vision has dawned. It towers upwards till it touches God and tells us of God.

Spinning electron hung over the void, electron supports atom and atom molecule; molecule supports tissue and tissue the rhythm of life. Through the wonders of science we learn to reconstruct in its richness the nature divided up by our analysis. Through division we reach a deeper unity; through the splitting up of the rainbow we know the inner richness of undivided light. As Goethe knew the beauty of holiness and adoration through the incense ascending from his childish pyramid of minerals, so we know the glory of God englobing us as we ascend the mountain of created being. “Un monde nouveau, comme si nous avions colloque avec les naturels d’une autre planète,” wrote Fabre of his insects. Every nook and corner of nature is such a new world.