Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 135

Chap.

II]

SCIENCE

§ 43.

insanity ensues.

It

AND

SIN

must be granted that

111 sin lias

the energy of thought, so that in all the fulness of

wondrous

this

gift manifests itself only

weakened its

now and

glories

then in

a rare athlete; and

it must be acknowledged that sin all makes us the victims of a false and an apparently

too often logical,

man,

as

ness,

is

but in reality very unlogical, reasoning; but man or, if you please, the universal human consciousalways able to overcome this sluggishness and to

correct these mistakes in reasoning.

No, the darkening of the understanding consists in something else, and would be better understood if we called it the darkening of our con-

Over against sin stands love, the sympathy of and even in our present sinful conditions the fact is noteworthy, that where this sympathy is active you understand much better and more accurately than where this sympathy is wanting. A friend of children understands the child and the child life. A lover of animals sciousness.

existence,

understands the nature in

life

of

the animal.

In order to study

material operations, you must love her. Without this inclination and this desire toward the object of yonv study, you do not advance an inch. Hence there is nothing its

problematic in the fact that the Holy Scripture presents man in his original state before he fell as having both by sympathy

and

affinity a

knowledge

us.

And this

is

is

which

is

entirely lost by

Sin robbed us, speaking generally, seeking sympathy, only to leave us this seeking love

the opposite of love.

of all

of nature,

significant in every department of study. It has

within some single domain, and that in a very defective But, taken as a whole, standing over against the cosmos as its object, our mind feels itself isolated; the object form.

lies

it, and the bond of love is wanting by which and learn to understand it. This fatal effect

outside of

to enter into of sin

must naturally find its deeper reason in the fact that harmony between us and the object has been dis-

the life

What once existed organically^, exists now consequently as foreign to each other, and this estrarigement from

turbed.

the object of our

way

to our

knowledge knowledge of it.

is

the greatest obstacle in the

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