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, w