Note, too, the arguments employed by Portalis, the official vindicator and champion of the Concordat. Attempting to prove the impossibility of introducing a new religion and the necessity of restoring the old one, he writes: "In ancient times, in the days of ignorance and barbarism, it was possible for very great men to proclaim themselves inspired by God, and, following the example of Prometheus, to bring down fire from heaven to animate a new world. But what is possible among a people still in the process of development is not possible in an old, time-worn nation, whose habits and thoughts it is so difficult to change." He begins, we see, by appealing to the authority of custom. And he continues: "Men believe in a religion only because they take it to be the work of a God. All is lost as soon as the hand of man is allowed to appear." It is unnecessary to argue that this language is not the language of faith. What Portalis refers to are the unsuccessful attempts to supersede the so-called revealed religion by a revolutionary religion, a "religion of reason," like Rousseau's and Robespierre's. These attempts had failed although the new religion did not need to be invented, but in reality already lived in the minds of the educated classes--had failed because it was impossible, directly after the overthrow of all outward authority, to give to the conviction shared by the majority of the educated an outward authority of the nature of that which had been overthrown. They bore no fruit, because their originators failed to grasp the fact that the human mind is perpetually remoulding its religious and moral conceptions, because they did not understand that the emancipated mind must inevitably feel itself moving onward even faster than before its emancipation towards a more perfect apprehension, and must consequently feel itself compelled ever and anew to reject every limiting, dogmatic principle. But to return, because the spontaneously evolved and chosen form of belief had proved untenable, to the much more untenable, old, petrified form, was certainly better politics than logic. There was no argument possible except an appeal to the direct utility of the proceeding. Therefore Portalis returns again and yet again to the position, not that religion is true, but that it is useful, that it is necessary, that it is impossible to rule without it, that morality without religious dogmas would be "like justice without courts for its administration." It is plain that the doctrine of hell-fire, as long as it is believed in, is a powerful instrument in the hand of a ruler. Portalis is actually honest enough to say in plain words: "The question of the truth or falsehood of this or that positive religion is a purely theological question, which does not concern us. Even if they are false, religions have this advantage, that they are a hindrance to the spread of arbitrary, independent teaching. They form a faith-focus for individuals. Governments are at ease with regard to ascertained dogmas which do not change. Superstition is, so to speak, regulated, circumscribed, confined within bounds which it either cannot or dare not overstep."