Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/143



HUMAN LIBERTY. 137

but which is created immediately by God, and, far sur- passing the condition of things material, has a hfe and action of its own â€” so that, knowing the unchangeable and necessary reasons of what is tiiie and good, it sees that no particular kind of good is necessary to us. When, therefore, it is estabhshed that man's soul is immortal and endowed with reason and not bound up with things material, the foundation of natural liberty is at once most firmly laid.

As the Catholic Church declares in the strongest terms the simplicity, spirituality, and immortahty of the soul, so with unequalled constancy and publicity she ever also asserts its freedom. These truths she has always taught, and has sustained them as a dogma of faith; and when- soever heretics or innovators have attacked the Uberty of man, the Church has defended it and protected this noble possession from destruction. History bears witness to the energy mth which she met the fury of the Mani- cheans and others like them; and the earnestness with which in later years she defended human liberty in the Council of Trent, and against the followei-s of Jansenius, is known to all. At no time, and in no place, has she held truce with fatalism.

Liberty, then, as We have said, belongs only to those wha ha ve the gift of reason or intelligence. Considered t. as to its nature, it i s the fac ulty of choosing means fitted L\ for the end proposed; for he is master of his actions who "can choose^'one" thing out of many. Now^ since every- thing cho sen as a means is viewed as good or useful, and since good, as such, is the proper object of our desire, it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or rather is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice. But the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in