That science of economy which is called
political teaches us the most adequate, the most economical way of
satisfying our needs, whether these needs are rational or irrational,
beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral--a business economically good may be
a swindle, something that in the long run kills the soul--and the
supreme human _need_ is the need of not dying, the need of enjoying for
ever the plenitude of our own individual limitation. And if the Catholic
eucharistic doctrine teaches that the substance of the body of Jesus
Christ is present whole and entire in the consecrated Host, and in each
part of it, this means that God is wholly and entirely in the whole
Universe and also in each one of the individuals that compose it. And
this is, fundamentally, not a logical, nor an esthetic, nor an ethical
principle, but a transcendental economic or religious principle. And
with this norm, philosophy is able to judge of optimism and pessimism.
_If the human soul is immortal, the world is economically or
hedonistically good; if not, it is bad_. And the meaning which pessimism
and optimism give to the categories of good and evil is not an ethical
sense, but an economic or hedonistic sense. Good is that which satisfies
our vital longing and evil is that which does not satisfy it.
Philosophy, therefore, is also the science of the tragedy of life, a
reflection upon the tragic sense of it.
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