130 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
There has thus been, in spite of individualistic principles, a general return to corporate organization throughout the French nation. Less than a century sufficed to make this inevitable ; and the fact is the more significant because the revolutionists themselves initiated the reaction. From now on public opinion is going to proclaim a return to the regime of association to be either imposed by law or gained by liberty, and to the status of social legislation. This is the beginning of the counter-revolu- tion. The threats of socialism have contributed largely to bring about this reaction. In fact, socialism has made gigantic strides in the last thirty years. Beginning with dreams of sentimental and vague Utopias, it became saturated with the scientific doc- trine formulated by Karl Marx ; and today its various schools all aim at a redistribu- tion of industrial and agricultural wealth to be brought about by means of the collective appropriation of the soil and of the instruments of labor. A materialistic conception of the society of the future has thus replaced the ideal of justice which haunted the brains of the revolutionists.
To such a movement, which is already sure of its ground, it is not sufficient to react negatively merely. A positive program must be opposed to it which shall establish the following principles: (i) the organization of such a corporate regime as shall bring together those social elements which are fitted for a common (social) function, and which shall grant to these associations, when given a permanent con- stitution, the power which is now vested almost entirely in the state ; (2) a legislation imposing upon labor, property, and capital regulations conforming to divine law, to the solidarity of the family, and hence to public welfare. Such reforms are the only means of weeding out the evils engendered by individualism, and of saving society, by snatching it from the anarchy in which it is steeped and the socialism which is invading it, from the evils which threaten it. Furthermore, the Catholic church alone can inspire and direct these reforms, by restoring to the people the notion of Christian social right, which was destroyed by the Revolution, and by reinstating in the minds of men the philosophy of the gospel, which has been suppressed by the rationalism trans- mitted by the Reforme aux Constituants de 1789, by the false conception of man and society which Rousseau taught, and by the influence on our contemporaries of Kant and Hegel. The church alone can resolve the objection to social reform constituted by the rivalry of nations. She must be the mediator through whom international reform legislation is made and such legislation is both possible and desirable.
Thus, in every respect, and from whatever point of view the social problem is con- sidered, its solution rests in the precepts and the action of the church. And society can work out its salvation only by accepting Christian doctrine intact and applying it in custom, in institutional life, and in legislation ; a merely superficial invocation of ecclesiastical aid will not be sufficient.
Liberalism is to be condemned in social and political theory just as is rationalism in metaphysical theory, the former because of the skepticism it has engendered in religion, the latter because of the powerful expansion of socialism which it has fostered.
The question which the twentieth century has to answer is : Will Christian citizens have sufficient faith, resolution, and devotion to join hands on the ground which their church shall indicate to them and to draw from her teachings a common program of action and of government ? A. DE MUN, "La question sociale au XIX e siecle," in L 1 Association catholique, December 15, 1899. A. D. S.
The Corporate Movement in Europe. The present century, in contrast to the negation and destruction of traditional authority which marked the eighteenth century, has been one of pretty steady reconstruction and reorganization. The chief agent which has furnished the formulas for the solution of the great religious, political, and economic, problems, with which the century has had to deal, has been modern sciences. Men are today again strongly feeling the need of a more stable authority, yet an authority based, not upon mere tradition or physical force, but upon free dis- cussion and scientific inquiry. This tendency is evident in both the religious and the political spheres, almost running to the extreme again, in some parts of Europe, of the aristocratic and imperial ideal of authority by force and tradition. But especially marked, in its free, democratic form, is this movement in the industrial world. The great discoveries of science applied to industry in the form of machinery, increasing
