This is what Napoleon does. As usual with him, in order to see deeper into others, he begins by examining himself:

"To say from whence I came, what I am, or where I am going, is above my comprehension. I am the watch that runs, but unconscious of itself."

These questions, which we are unable to answer,

"drive us onward to religion; we rush forward to welcome her, for that is our natural tendency. But knowledge comes and we stop short. Instruction and history, you see, are the great enemies of religion, disfigured by the imperfections of humanity.... I once had faith. But when I came to know something, as soon as I began to reason, which happened early, at the age of thirteen, my faith staggered and became uncertain."5108

This double personal conviction is in the back-ground of his thinking, when he drafted the Concordat:

"It will be said that I am a papist.5109 I am nothing. In Egypt I was a Moslem; here I shall be a Catholic, for the good of the people. I do not believe in religions. The idea of a God!" (And then, pointing upward:) "Who made all that?"

Imagination has already decorated this great name with its legends. Let us content ourselves with those already existing; "the restlessness of man" is such that he cannot do without them; in default of those already made he would fashion others, haphazard, and still more strange. The positive religions keep man from going astray; it is these which render the supernatural definite and precise;5110 "he had better catch it there than pick it up at Mademoiselle Lenormand's, or with some fortune-teller or a passing charlatan." An established religion

"is a kind of vaccination which, in satisfying our love of the marvelous, protects us against quacks and sorcerers;5111 the priests are far better than the Cagliostros, Kants, and the rest of the German mystics."

In sum illuminism and metaphysics,5112 speculative inventions of the brain or of a contagious overexcitement of the nervous system, all these illusions of gullible men, are basically unhealthy, and, in general, anti-social. Nevertheless, since they are part of human nature, let us accept them like so many streams tumbling down a slope, but on condition that they remain in their own beds and that they have many but no new ones and never one bed alone for itself.

"I do not want a dominant religion, nor the establishment of new ones. The Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran systems, established by the Concordat, are sufficient."5113

Their direction and force are intelligible, and their irruptions can be guarded against. Moreover, the present inclinations and configurations of the human soil favor them; the child follows the road marked out by the parent, and the man follows the road marked out when a child.

"Listen,5114 last Sunday, here at Malmaison, while strolling alone in the solitude enjoying the repose of nature, my ear suddenly caught the sound of the church-bell at Rueil. I was moved, so strong is the force of early habits and education! I said to myself, What an impression this must make on simple, credulous people!"

Let us gratify them; let us give back these bells and the rest to the Catholics. After all, the general effect of Christianity is beneficial.

"As far as I am concerned,5115 I do not see in it the mystery of the incarnation, but the mystery of social order, the association of religion with paradise, an idea of equality which keeps the rich from being massacred by the poor."

"Society5116 could not exist without an inequality of fortunes, and an inequality of fortunes without religion.5117 A man dying of starvation alongside of one who has abundance would not yield to this difference unless he had some authority which assured him that God so orders it that there must be both poor and rich in the world, but that in the future, and throughout eternity, the portion of each will be changed.5118"

Alongside of the repressive police exercised by the State there is a preventive police exercised by the Church. The clergy, in its cassock, is an additional spiritual gendarmerie, much more efficient than the temporal gendarmerie in its stout boots, while the essential thing is to make both keep step together in concert.

Between the two domains, between that which belongs to civil authority and that which belongs to religious authority, is there any line of separation?

"I look in vain5119 where to place it; its existence is purely chimerical. I see only clouds, obscurities, difficulties. The civil government condemns a criminal to death; the priest gives him absolution and offers him paradise."

In relation to this act, both powers operate publicly in an inverse sense on the same individual, one with the guillotine and the other with a pardon. As these authorities may clash with each other, let us prevent conflicts and leave no undefined frontier; let us trace this out beforehand; let us indicate what our part is and not allow the Church to encroach on the State.—The Church rally wants all; it is the accessory which she concedes to us, while she appropriates the principal to herself.

"Mark the insolence of the priests5120 who, in sharing authority with what they call the temporal power, reserve to themselves all action on the mind, the noblest part of man, and take it on themselves to reduce my part merely to physical action. They retain the soul and fling me the corpse!"

In antiquity, things were much better done, and are still better done now in Moslem countries.

"In the Roman republic,5121 the senate was the interpreter of heaven, and this was the incentive of the force and strength of that government. In Turkey, and throughout the Orient, the Koran serves as both a civil and religious bible. Only in Christianity do we find the pontificate distinct from the civil government."

And even this has occurred only in one branch of Christianity. Everywhere, except in Catholic countries,

"in England,5122 in Russia, in the northern monarchies, in one part of Germany, the legal union of the two powers, the religious control in the hands of the sovereign, 'is an accomplished fact.' One cannot govern without it; otherwise, the repose, dignity, and independence of a nation are disturbed at every moment."

It is a pity that "the difficulty5123 cannot be overcome as with Henry VIII. in England. The head of the French government would then, by legislative statute, be the supreme head of the French Church."

Unfortunately, this is repugnant to France. Napoleon often tries to bring it about, but is satisfied that in this matter "he would never obtain national cooperation"; once embarked," fully engaged in the enterprise, "the nation would have abandoned him." Unable to take this road, he takes another, which leads to the same result. As he himself afterwards states, this result "was, for a long time and always, the object of his wishes and mediations.... It is not his aim5124 to change the faith of his people; he respects spiritual objects and wants to rule them without meddling with them; his aim is to make these square with his views, with his policy, but only through the influence of temporal concerns." That spiritual authority should remain intact; that it should operate on its own speculative domain, that it to say, on dogmas, and on its practical domain, namely, on the sacraments and on worship; that is should be sovereign on this limited territory, Napoleon admits, for such is the fact. We have only to open our eyes to see it; right or wrong, spiritual authority on this distinct domain is recognized sovereign, obeyed, effective through the persistent, verified loyalty of believers. It cannot be done away with by supposing it non-existent; on the contrary, a competent statesman will maintain it in order to make use of it and apply it to civil purposes. Like an engineer who comes across a prolific spring near his factory, he will not try to dry it up, nor let the water be dispersed and lost; he has no idea of letting it remain inactive; on the contrary, he collects it, digs channels for it, directs and economizes the flow, and renders the water serviceable in his workshops. In the Catholic Church, the authority to be won and utilized is that of the clergy over believers and that of the sovereign pontiff over the clergy.

"You will see," exclaimed Bonaparte, while negotiating the Concordat, "how I will turn the priests to account, and, first of all, the Pope!"5125