[51] In this particular, he is
politic, taking one step more on the road on which he has entered
through the Concordat, desiring to conciliate Rome and the French
clergy by seeming to give religion the highest place. - But it is only
a place for show, similar to that which he assigns to ecclesiastical
dignitaries in public ceremonies and on the roll of precedence. He
does not concern himself with reanimating or even preserving earnest
belief: far from that:
"it should be so arranged," he says,[52] " that young people may be
neither too bigoted nor too incredulous: they should be adapted to the
state of the nation and of society."
All that can be demanded of them is external deference, personal
attendance on the ceremonies of worship, a brief prayer in Latin
muttered in haste at the beginning and end of each lesson,[53] in
short, acts like those of raising one's hat or other public marks of
respect, such as the official attitudes imposed by a government,
author of the Concordat, on its military and civil staff. They
likewise, the lyceans and the collegians, are to belong to it and do
already, Napoleon thus forming his adult staff out of his juvenile
staff.
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