The Modern Regime, Volume 2

The Modern Regime, Volume 2 is a Historical Book. After the centralizing and invading State has taken hold of local societies there is nothing left for it but to cast its net over moral societies, and this second haul is more important than the first one; for, if local societies are based on the proximity of physical bodies and habitations, the latter are formed out of the accord which exists between minds and souls; in possessing these, the hold is no longer on the outside but on the inside of man, his thought, his will; the incentive within is laid hold of, and this directly; then only can he be fully mastered, and disposed of at discretion. To this end, the main purpose of the conquering State is the possession of the Churches; alongside as well as outside of itself, these are the great powers of the nation; not only does their domain differ from its own but, again it is vaster and lies deeper. Beyond the temporal patrimony and the small fragment of human history which the eyes of the flesh perceive, they embrace and present to mental vision the whole world and its first cause, the total ordinance of things, the infinite perspective of a past eternity and that of an eternity to come. Underneath the corporeal and intermittent actions which civil power prescribes and regulates, they govern the imagination, the conscience and the affections, the whole inward being, that mute, persistent effort of which our visible acts are simply the incomplete expressions and rare outbursts. Indeed, even when they set limits to these, voluntarily, onscientiously, 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.