t texts of Scripture which enjoin
obedience to the laws: he accuses Christianity of rendering men slaves
to an anti-social tyranny, because its priests set up an authority in
opposition to civil laws; and as for Protestantism, it propagated
discords between its followers, and thereby violated civic unity.
Christianity, he argues, is a foe to civil government, for it aims at
making men happy in this life by inspiring them with hope of a future
life; while the aim of civil government is "to lend assistance to the
feeble against the strong, and by this means to allow everyone to
enjoy a sweet tranquillity, the road of happiness." He therefore
concludes that Christianity and civil government are diametrically
opposed.

In this tirade we see the youth's spirit of revolt flinging him not
only against French law, but against the religion which sanctions it.
He sees none of the beauty of the Gospels which Rousseau had
admitted. His views are more rigid than those of his teacher.
Scarcely can he conceive of two influences, the spiritual and the
governmental, working on parallel lines, on different parts of man's
nature. His conception of human society is that of an indivisible,
indistinguishable whole, wherein materialism, tinged now and again by
religious sentiment and personal honour, is the sole noteworthy
influence. He finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from
within to without, which aims at transforming character, and thus
transforming the world. In its headlong quest of tangible results his
eager spirit scorns so tardy a method: he will "compel men to be
happy," and for this result there is but one practicable means, the
Social Contract, the State. Everything which mars the unity of the
Social Contract shall be shattered, so that the State may have a clear
field for the exercise of its beneficent despotism. Such is
Buonaparte's political and religious creed at the age of seventeen,
and such it remained (with many reservations suggested by maturer
thought and self-interest) to the end of his days. It reappears in his
policy anent the Concordat of 1802, by which religion was reduced to
the level of handmaid to the State, as also in his frequent assertions
that he would never have quite the same power as the Czar and the
Sultan, because he had not undivided sway over the consciences of his
people.[10] In this boyish essay we may perhaps discern the
fundamental reason of his later failures. He never completely
u