s, or else ground to the earth by the most degrading
superstitions? A nation, either on the one hand governed by
superstition, or, on the other, atheistical, contains within itself the
disease which sooner or later will destroy it. You yourself, it is
notorious, have never been within the walls of a temple, nor are Lares
or Penates to be found within your doors.'

'I deny it not,' rejoined the Prefect. 'Most who rise to any
intelligence, must renounce, if they ever harbored it, all faith in the
absurdities and nonsense of the Roman religion. But what then? These
very absurdities, as we deem them, are holy truth to the multitude, and
do more than all bolts, bars, axes, and gibbets, to keep them in
subjection. The intelligent are good citizens by reflection; the
multitude, through instincts of birth, and the power of superstition. My
idea is, as you perceive, Piso, but one. Religion is the state, and for
reasons of state must be preserved in the very form in which it has so
long upheld the empire.'

'An idea more degrading than yours, to our species,' I replied, 'can
hardly be conceived. I cannot but look upon man as something more than a
part of the state. He is, first of all, a man, and is to be cared for as
such. To legislate for the state, to the ruin of the man, is to pamper
the body, and kill the soul. It is to invert the true process. The
individual is more than the abstraction which we term the state. If
governments cannot exist, nor empires hold their sway, but by the
destruction of the human being, why let them fall. The lesser must yield
to the greater. As a Christian, my concern is for man as man. This is
the essence of the religion of Christ. It is philanthropy. It sees in
every human soul a being of more value than empires, and its purpose is,
by furnishing it with truths and motives, equal to its wants, to exalt
it, purify it, and perfect it. If, in achieving this work, existing
religions or governments are necessarily overturned or annihilated,
Christianity cares not, so long as man is the gainer. And is it not
certain, that no government could really be injured, although it might
apparently, and for a season, by its subjects being raised in all
intelligence and all virtue? My work therefore, Varus, will be to sow
truth in the heart of the people, which shall make that heart fertile
and productive. I do not believe that in doing this Rome will suffer
injury, but on the contrary receive benefit. Its religi