The Modern Regime, vol 2 | Page 8

is finished; it
already contains his ideas in full; the intelligent eye has only to follow
them and to note their consequences and combination. André
Chevrillon Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893.
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BOOK FIFTH. The Church.
CHAPTER I
. MORAL INSTITUTIONS
I. Napoleon's Objectives.
Centralization and moral institutions - Object of the State in absorbing
Churches. - Their influence on civil society.
After the centralizing and invading State has taken hold of local
societies there is nothing left for it but to cast its net over moral
societies[7], and this second haul is more important than the first one;
for, if local societies are based on the proximity of physical bodies and
habitations, the latter are formed out of the accord which exists
between minds and souls; in possessing these, the hold is no longer on
the outside but on the inside of man, his thought, his will; the incentive
within is laid hold of, and this directly; then only can he be fully
mastered, and disposed of at discretion. To this end, the main purpose
of the conquering State is the possession of the Churches; alongside as
well as outside of itself, these are the great powers of the nation; not
only does their domain differ from its own but, again it is vaster and

lies deeper. Beyond the temporal patrimony and the small fragment of
human history which the eyes of the flesh perceive, they embrace and
present to mental vision the whole world and its first cause, the total
ordinance of things, the infinite perspective of a past eternity and that
of an eternity to come. Underneath the corporeal and intermittent
actions which civil power prescribes and regulates, they govern the
imagination, the conscience and the affections, the whole inward being,
that mute, persistent effort of which our visible acts are simply the
incomplete expressions and rare outbursts. Indeed, even when they set
limits to these, voluntarily, conscientiously, there is no limit; in vain do
they proclaim, if Christian, that their kingdom is not of this world;
nevertheless, it is, since they belong to it; masters of dogma and of
morals, they teach and command in it. In their all-embracing
conception of divine and human things, the State, like a chapter in a
book, has its place and their teachings in this chapter are for it of capital
importance. For, here do they write out its rights and duties, the rights
and duties of its subjects, a more or less perfect plan of civil order. This
plan, avowed or dissimulated, towards which they incline the
preferences of the faithful, issues at length, spontaneously and
invincible from their doctrine, like a plant from its seed, to vegetate in
temporal society, flower and fructify therein and send its roots deeper
down for the purpose of shattering or of consolidating civil and
political institutions. The influence of a Church on the family and on
education, on the use of wealth or of authority, on the spirit of
obedience or of revolt, on habits of initiation or of inertia, of enjoyment
or of abstention, of charity or of egoism, on the entire current train of
daily practice and of dominant impulses, in every branch of private or
public life, is immense, and constitutes a distinct and permanent social
force of the highest order. Every political calculation is unsound if it is
omitted or treated as something of no consequence, and the head of a
State is bound to comprehend the nature of it if he would estimate its
grandeur.

II. Napoleon's opinions and methods.
Napoleon's opinions on religion and religious belief. - His motives in
preferring established and positive religions. - Difficulty in defining the
limit between spiritual and temporal authority. - Except in Catholic

countries, both united in one hand. - Impossible to effect this union in
France arbitrarily. - Napoleon's way of attaining this end by another
process. - His intention of overcoming spiritual authority through
temporal interests.
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."[8]
This double personal conviction is in the back-ground of