Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/567



REVIEW OF HIS PONTIFICATE. 561

tiquity have declared, religion is the chief foundation of justice and virtue. When the bonds are broken which unite man to God, who is the Sovereign Legislator and Universal Judge, a mere phantom of moraUty remains; a morality which is purely civic and, as it is termed, inde- pendent, which, abstracting from the Eternal Mind and the laws of God, descends inevitably till it reaches the ultimate conclusion of making man a law unto himself. Incapable, in consequence, of rising on the wings of Chris- tian hope to the goods of the world beyond, man will seek a material satisfaction in the comforts and enjoyments of life. There will be excited in him a thirst for pleasure, a desire of riches, and an eager quest of rapid and un- limited wealth, even at the cost of justice. There will be enkindled in him every ambition and a feverish and frenzied desire to gratify them even in defiance of law, and he will be swayed by a contempt for right and for public authority, as well as by licentiousness of life which, when the condition becomes general, wiU mark the real decay of society.

Perhaps We may be accused of exaggerating the sad consequences of the disorders of which We speak. No; for the reahty is before our eyes and warrants but too truly Our forebodings. It is manifest that if there is not some betterment soon, the bases of society will crumble and drag down with them the great and eternal principles of law and morality.

It is in consequence of this condition of things that the social body, beginning with the family, is suffering such serious evils. For the lay State, forgetting its limi- tations and the essential object of the authority which it wields, has laid its hands on the marriage bond to pro- fane it and has stripped it of its religious character; it has dared as much as it could in the matter of that natural right which parents possess to educate their children, and in many countries it has destroyed the stability of marriage by giving a legal sanction to the licentious insti-