Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/570



564 REVIEW OF HIS PONTIFICATE

the actual conditions of society by making use of ev^ery means that a bUnd and savage passion can suggest. And as society draws its unity and its Ufe from the authority which governs it, so it is against authority that anarchy directs its efforts. Who does not feel a thrill of horror, indignation, and pity at the remembrance of the many victims that of late have fallen beneath its blows, em- perors, empresses, kings, presidents of powerful repub- lics, whose only crime was the sovereign power with which they were invested?

In presence of the immensity of the evils which over- whelm society and the perils which menace it, Our duty compels Us to again warn all men of good will, especially those who occupy exalted positions, and to conjure them as We now do, to devise what remedies the situation calls for and with prudent energy to apply them vidthout delay.

First of all, it behooves them to inquire what remedies are needed, and to examine well their potency in the present needs. We have extolled liberty and its advantages to the skies, and have proclaimed it as a sovereign remedy and an incomparable instrument of peace and prosperity which will be most fruitful in good results. But facts have clearly shown us that it does not possess the power which it attributed to it. Economic conflicts, struggles of the classes are surging around us like a conflagration on all sides, and there is no promise of the dawn of the day of public tranquillity. In point of fact, and there is no one who does not see it, hberty as it is now understood, that is to say, a liberty granted indiscriminately to truth and to error, to good and to evil, ends only in destroying all that is noble, generous, and holy, and in opening the gates still wider to crime, to suicide, and to a multitude of the most de- grading passions.

The doctrine is also taught that the development of public instruction, by making the people more polished and more enlightened, would suffice as a check to unhealthy tendencies and to keep man in the ways of uprightness