All men deserve to be saved, but, as I have said in the previous
chapter, he above all deserves immortality who desires it passionately
and even in the face of reason. An English writer, H.G. Wells, who has
taken upon himself the role of the prophet (a thing not uncommon in his
country), tells us in _Anticipations_ that "active and capable men of
all forms of religious profession tend in practice to disregard the
question of immortality altogether." And this is because the religious
professions of these active and capable men to whom Wells refers are
usually simply a lie, and their lives are a lie, too, if they seek to
base them upon religion. But it may be that at bottom there is not so
much truth in what Wells asserts as he and others imagine. These active
and capable men live in the midst of a society imbued with Christian
principles, surrounded by institutions and social feelings that are the
product of Christianity, and faith in the immortality of the soul exists
deep down in their own souls like a subterranean river, neither seen nor
heard, but watering the roots of their deeds and their motives.
It must be admitted that there exists in truth no more solid foundation
for morality than the foundation of the Catholic ethic. The end of man
is eternal happiness, which consists in the vision and enjoyment of God
_in saecula saeculorum_. Where it errs, however, is in the choice of the
means conducive to this end; for to make the attainment of eternal
happiness dependent upon believing or not believing in the Procession of
the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son and not from the Father
alone, or in the Divinity of Jesus, or in the theory of the Hypostatic
Union, or even in the existence of God, is, as a moment's reflection
will show, nothing less than monstrous.
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