92 Discour.sEs of father hyacinthe. 



shed, lacGrated flesh, and shattered bones. The silent 

 depths of ocean hide no different scene. AVar, then, 

 seems to be the very Uiw of the relations of being. If 

 I were to formnlate this law, I shonld do it thus : Life 

 is feeble and incapable of sclf-snstentation, and needs 

 aliment ; life has an overflowing fecnndity, and needs a 

 limii. God has appointed death to furnish both of 

 these. Some simple-minded Christians suppose that, 

 before the sin of Adam, the animals were free from 

 every ■ instinct of ferocity. St. Thomas Aquinas an- 

 swered all such long ago. Discord between animals is 

 not a consequence of sin, but a condition of nature. 

 This is that fierce, cruel breath — at once destructive and 

 conservative, conservative because destructive, and de- 

 structive because conservative — which breathes in the 

 very vitals of life. It is not sin, but God, that does all 

 this. It is he that has stretched the sway of death, and 

 with death of war, from one end of creation to the 

 other. 



AYeary, noAV, with this spectacle of horror — for it is 

 horror, after all — let me lift my eyes toward that other 

 Avorld. ... I have been looking upon the lower world. 

 Let me look now into the world above, that world which 

 reason suspects to exist, which experience has never 

 reached, but of which revelation recounts the history 

 — the "^"orld of spirits. An endless chain of bodily ex- 

 istences stretches down below me. Above me, how is 

 it — since I am the microcosm, the centre and epitome 

 of the world ? May it not be that there is another chain 

 of spiritual existences, individuals and races, richer still 

 in their development ? 



Ilailj angelic world ! Thou, at least, slialt present 

 the spectacle of peace! Tins is the world of truth: 

 truth is tlio creator of ordei-, and order is the creator 



