love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness,
of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some
eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the
revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was
treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by Père
Lacordaire.[181] He is entering upon this question: What can have been
the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the
Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the
love which gives itself, which he designates by the term--goodness.
"Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said
to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard
as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of
its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before
God, which preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give a name
without betraying the truth?... There remained something, Sirs, be very
sure, more generous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more
powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and if you find it hard to
understand me, if your own endowments are unknown to you, listen to
Bossuet speaking of you:--'When God,' says he, 'made the heart of man,
the first thing He planted there was goodness:' goodness; that is to
say, that virtue which does not consult self-interest, which does not
wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to be solicited by the
attraction of the beautiful, but which stoops towards its object all the
more, as it is poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy of
contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man possesses that adorable
faculty. It is not genius, nor glory, nor love, which measures the
elevation of his soul,--it is goodness. This it is which gives to the
human countenance its principal and most powerful charm; this it is
which draws us together; this it is which brings into communication the
good and the evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth, the