State the direct, personal interest of the citizen. They have laboured to bring the political organism into the condition of a machine, which should always be preserved in its highest efficiency by the inner force and vitality of its springs, so as not to require the continual application of fresh external influences. Indeed, if modern States can lay claim to any marked superiority over those of antiquity, it is chiefly in the fact that they have more fully and clearly realized this principle. That they have done so, the very circumstance of their employing religion as a means of culture is a striking proof. But still, even religion, in so far as it is designed to produce good actions alone, by the faithful observance of certain positive principles, or to exercise a positive influence on morals in general,—even religion is a foreign agency, and operates only from without. Hence it should always remain the ultimate object of the legislator—an object which a perfect knowledge of human nature will convince him is attainable only by granting the highest degree of freedom—to elevate the culture of the citizen to such a point, that he may find every incentive to co-operation in the State's designs, in the consciousness of the advantages which the political institution affords him for the immediate furtherance of his individual schemes and interests. Now, that such an understanding should prevail, implies the diffusion of enlightenment and a high degree of mental culture; and these can never flourish or spread themselves where the spirit of free inquiry is fettered and impeded by laws.
Meanwhile, the propriety and expediency of such extensions of State agency are only acknowledged, because the conviction maintains its ground that neither external tranquillity nor morality can be secured without generally-received religious principles, or, at least, without the State's supervision of the citizen's religion, and that without these it would be impossible to preserve the authority of the law.
