To all such it will be enough to observe: the Catholic Church is not opposed to progress in the material order of things. She places no hindrance to the exercise of man's inventive faculties. But above and beyond the highest material progress, above and beyond railroads and telegraphs, steam-engines, and cannons and iron-clads, she places the moral and spiritual progress of the human race. She will never cease to maintain that though railroads and telegraphs girdle the earth a hundred times over, and the telephones penetrate into every private dwelling; though the sails of a nation's commerce whiten every sea, and the face of the land be covered with the most varied and prosperous industries--man will be none the happier, society none the more peaceful and durable when not leavened by the spirit of Christian truth and Christian morality. At every new invention men cry aloud in tones of triumph: See how humanity is advancing; see what victories mind is daily gaining over matter; and dazzled by the splendor of their progress in the material order of things, come to think that therein lies the end of their existence, the supreme aim of all human exertion. To all such the church simply observes: Labor and strive to make what progress you can in art and science, in commerce and industry, in every department of human enterprise and activity: and when you have travelled over the whole field, have exhausted all your resources, and reached the farthest limits of your power, I say to you: You have not progressed far enough. A far nobler and higher ideal is yours. You are born to be a child of God, to bring out into utmost clearness and distinctness the likeness of God that is stamped on your soul, and develop into the full-grown man, "to the measure of the stature and the fulness of Christ." Thus, as regards the higher order of progress, the Catholic Church is in advance of her age. "Excelsior" is the motto emblazoned on her flag. It is no difficult task for the mere theorist to sketch out, in the domain of religion or politics, systems ideally perfect, serenely ignoring in their application such disturbing elements as the vices and frailties incident to a fallen humanity. But the practical man of affairs who has to deal, not with abstractions, but with the concrete realities of life, soon, alas! perceives that such a dazzling formula, for example, as that of the French republicans, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," can be realized on earth by revolutionizing, not only political institutions, but the very nature of man himself. Humanity is a mere empty abstraction, except in so far as we conceive it as composed of individuals. Society is a mere aggregate of individuals. Except to your modern prophet, it is difficult to conceive how there can be progress in society without progress among the individuals who go to compose that society.