The Modern Regime, vol 2 | Page 9

his thinking,
when he drafted the Concordat:
"It will be said that I am a papist.[9] 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;[10] "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;[11]the priests are far better
than the Cagliostros, Kants, and the rest of the German mystics."
In sum illuminism and metaphysics,[12] 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."[13]
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,[14] 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,[15] 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."
"Society[16] could not exist without an inequality of fortunes, and an
inequality of fortunes without religion.[17] 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.[18]"
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 vain[19] 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 priests[20] 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,[21] the senate was the interpreter of heaven,
and