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6.

7.

8.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone

Will lead my steps aright.

XIV. TRUE FRATERNITY PRODUCED ONLY BY CATHOLIC FAITH OR TEACHING.

LACORDAIRE.

Catholic doctrine is the only doctrine which has produced, and which produces, the charity of apostleship. This I proved in my last Conference. I add, that Catholic doctrine alone produces the charity of fraternity. Fraternity is the reciprocal' sharing of the heart, of labor, and of possessions; and it seems, gentlemen, that that virtue should flow in us by a source as simple and as natural as our life. For, in fact, what are we? Are we not members of one and the same family; the children of one and the same father, and of one single

home? In vain should we desire to destroy the pages of our genealogy all, without exception, all of us come from the same place; and, whilst pride, without regarding the human race, makes up for itself illustrious and particular antiquities, the blood of Adam speaks in us louder than any titles, and prostrates us all at the feet of the same patriarch as at the feet of the same God.

2. Yet, notwithstanding that evident community of origin, and that fraternity which nature has placed in us, what a scene does history present to us, if we consider it without reference to Catholic doctrine? Races, enemies to each other; families withdrawing themselves as far as possible the one from the other by rank, power, and tradition; men, greedy of this world's possessions, and seizing upon the land, not as the real patrimony of all, but as the privileged patrimony of the strongest, the most skillful and the most fortunate; or every side war, jealousy, envy, spoliation, the elevation of a few, and the misery of many.

3. However, gentlemen, it is not the same with regard to fraternity as to humility, chastity, and apostleship. The world, which rejects these even after the revelation which has been made of them, does not equally reject the other; a great number appreciate it now, even without the pale of Catholic doctrine; and if there be a dream cherished by elevated souls, if there be an idea which agitates opinion, which inspires brilliant

pages and consecrates great labors, it is assuredly the idea of fraternity.

4. Whilst the world insults humility as a virtue which harasses it; rejects chastity as an intolerable burden; stigmatizes the apostleship as an invasion of truth, or of that which calls itself truth; fraternity finds there warm and generous friends, who even exaggerate its rights; who err as to the means of establishing it; but who proclaim it as the last object and end of all history, and of all the movements of mankind. The spectacle to which we invite you will be still more curious and instructive. It will be grand to see, on the one hand, the world pursuing the same idea as ourselves, powerless to realize it, notwithstanding its efforts; and, on the other, Catholic doctrine daily attaining its fraternal objects by the simple eflusion of its teaching, and of its ordinary efficacy.

5. In the year of Rome 680, under the consulship of Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, and facing the sea of Naples, two or three hundred men were assembled. They bore strongly-marked traces of our common dignity; and yet it was not necessary to look long upon them to discover also in their whole being the marks, too visible, of a painful degradation. In the midst of the general silence, one of them stood up and addressed his discourse to those who were assembled:

6. "Dear and miserable companions in misfortune, have we determined to bear even to the end the injuries

of the lot which has been made for us? Humanity exists not for us; outcasts from the world, grasped from our earliest days by the iron hand of destiny, we have up to this time only served to amuse our masters by barbarous spectacles, or by our labors to feed their ostentatious 6 pomp, their effeminacy, or their voluptuousness. It is true we have fled-we are free-but you feel that that liberty is still only servitude; the whole empire, the whole world is against us; we have no friends, no country, no home. But do we want other friends, another country, another home than ourselves? Let us consider who we are, and first count our strength. Are we not the greater number? What are our masters? A handful of patricians, whose houses we people, who breathe only because we have not the courage to put our hands upon their breasts to stifle them. And if it be as I say, if we have the power of the greater number, if nearly the whole of mankind be enslaved to a horde enjoying all and abusing everything, what hinders us from at once standing up and stretching out our hand in the world, and from asking the gods to decide between us and our oppressors ? We have not only numbers, we have intelligence also ; many of us have taught their masters, or teach their children, human learning; we know what they know, and that which they know they derive from us; it is we who are their grammarians, their philosophers, and who have taught them that eloquence which they bear

to the forum, in order to oppress the whole world. in fine, we have more than number and intelligence; we have right on our side, for who has made us slaves?— Where is the title of our servitude and of their sovereignty? If it be war, let us make war in our turn; let us for once try destiny, and let us merit by our courage, that destiny may decide in our favor."

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7. Having thus spoken, Spartacus stretched out his hand toward heaven and toward the sea; his action completed his discourse; the crowd who had listened. to him rose up, felt that they had a captain, and eight days after, forty thousand slaves ranged in battle array made the Roman generals turn their backs, stirred up from one end to the other, and saw themselves, like Hannibal, on the point of seeing the smoke of Rome as victors.

8. They were vanquished, however, notwithstanding their numbers and their courage; and Pompey coming to put the seal upon their defeat, had but to write a few lines to the Senate, to inform it that the vile slaves, in the moment of terror, had returned to their legitimate nothingness.

9. Such was the state of the world some years before the coming of Jesus Christ. A large portion of mankind had neither country, nor family, nor rights ; they were inscribed in the law under the rubric of things, and not of men, They were treated as a more intelligent, stronger race of animals, but who had no

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