of the Semite or the European; in our Europe
that of the German, the Latin or the Slave; in such a way that its
contradictions, instead of condemning it, justify it, its diversity
producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.--This is
no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive
and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness
and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his
mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed
into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself
only through symbols; it evokes divine figures.[3308]Religion in its
nature is a metaphysical poem accompanied by faith. Under this title it
is popular and efficacious; for, apart from an invisible select few,
a pure abstract idea is only an empty term, and truth, to be apparent,
must be clothed with a body. It requires a form of worship, a legend,
and ceremonies in order to address the people, women, children, the
credulous, every one absorbed by daily cares, any understanding in which
ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery. Owing to this
palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the conscience,
to counterbalance natural egoism, to curb the mad onset of brutal
passions, to lead the will to abnegation and devotion, to tear Man away
from himself and place him wholly in the service of truth, or of his
kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and missionaries.
Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a natural and
precious instrumentality. On the one hand men require it for the
contemplation of infinity and to live properly; if it were suddenly to
be taken away from them their souls would be a mournful void, and they
would do greater injury to their neighbors. Besides, it would be vain
to attempt to take it away from them; the hand raised against it would
encounter only its envelope; it would be repelled after a sanguinary
struggle, its germ lying too deep to be extirpated.

And when, at length, after religion and custom, we regard the State,
that is to say, the armed power possessing both physical force and moral
authority, we find for it an almost equally noble origin. It has, in
Europe at least, from Russia to Portugal and from Norway to the two
Sicilies, in its origin and essence, a military foundation in which
heroism constitutes itself the champion of right. Here and there