day, and especially for women and for all nuns; the central conception
around which all Roman ideas turn, the conception of the imperium and
of government, has here found its perfect accomplishment and attained to
its final outermost limits.

There are now of these spiritual governors about 180,000, installed in
the five regions of the world, each assigned to the leadership of about
1000 souls and as special guardian of a distinct flock, all ordained by
bishops instituted by the Pope, he being absolute monarch and declared
such by the latest council. In the new Rome as in the ancient Rome,
authority has gradually become concentrated until it has centered in
and is entrusted wholly to the hands of one man. Romulus, the Alban
shepherd, was succeeded by Caesar Augustus, Constantine or Theodosius,
whose official title was "Your Eternal," "Your Divine," and who
pronounced their decrees "immutable oracles." Peter, the fisherman of
Galilee, was succeeded by infallible pontiffs whose official title is
"Your Holiness," and whose decrees, for every Catholic, are "immutable
oracles" in fact as in law, not hyperbolically, but in the full sense
of the words expressed by exact terms. The imperial institution has thus
formed itself anew; it has simply transferred itself from one domain
to another; only, in passing from the temporal order of things to the
spiritual order, it has become firmer and stronger, for it has guarded
against two defects which weakened its antique model.--One the one hand,
it has provided for the transmission of supreme power; in old Rome, they
did not know how to regulate this; hence, when an interregnum occurred,
the many violent competitors, the fierce conflicts, the brutalities,
all the usurpations of force, all the calamities of anarchy. In Catholic
Rome, the election of the sovereign pontiff belongs definitively to a
college of prelates[5340] who vote according to established formalities;
these elect the new pope by a majority of two-thirds, and, for more than
four centuries, not one of these elections has been contested; between
each defunct pope and his elected successor, the transfer of universal
obedience has been prompt and unhesitating and, during as after the
interregnum, no schism in the Church has occurred.--On the other hand,
in the legal title of Caesar Augustus there was a defect. According to
Roman law, he was only the representative of the people; the community
had delegated all its rights i