The Catholic solution of our problem, of our unique vital problem, the problem of the immortality and eternal salvation of the individual soul, satisfies the will, and therefore satisfies life; but the attempt to rationalize it by means of dogmatic theology fails to satisfy the reason. And reason has its exigencies as imperious as those of life. It is no use seeking to force ourselves to consider as super-rational what clearly appears to us to be contra-rational, neither is it any good wishing to become coalheavers when we are not coalheavers. Infallibility, a notion of Hellenic origin, is in its essence a rationalistic category. Let us now consider the rationalist or scientific solution--or, more properly, dissolution--of our problem. FOOTNOTES: [13] Erwin Rohde, _Psyche_, "Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen." Tübingen, 1907. Up to the present this is the leading work dealing with the belief of the Greeks in the immortality of the soul. [14] Gal. ii. 20. [15] On all relating to this question see, among others, Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, ii., Teil i., Buch vii., cap. i. [16] Though we are become dust, In thee, O Lord, our hope confides, That we shall live again clad In the flesh and skin that once covered us. [17] _Libra de la Conversión de la Magdelena_, part iv., chap. ix. [18] In his exposition of Protestant dogma in _Systematische christliche Religion_, Berlin, 1909, one of the series entitled _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_, published by P. Hinneberg. [19] The common use of the expression _música celestial_ to denote "nonsense, something not worth listening to," lends it a satirical byplay which disappears in the English rendering.--J.E.C.F. [20] It is not Thy promised heaven, my God, that moves me to love Thee. (Anonymous, sixteenth or seventeenth century. See _Oxford Book of Spanish Verse_, No. 106.) [21] _Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_, part iii., chap. i. [22] _Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg_, x^{me} entretien. [23] The allusion is to the traditional story of the coalheaver whom the devil sought to convince of the irrationality of belief in the Trinity. The coalheaver took the cloak that he was wearing and folded it in three folds. "Here are three folds," he said, "and the cloak though threefold is yet one." And the devil departed baffled.--J.E.C.F. [24] Joseph Pohle, "Christlich Katolische Dogmatik," in _Systematische Christliche Religion_, Berlin, 1909. _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_ series. [25] "Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered," 1816, in _The Complete Works of William Ellery Channing, D.D._, London, 1884. V THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION