The original cause of Tegnér's desire for advancement was of a purely economic nature; he had debts, and the increase of income served him in very good stead. Like all the cultivated people of his day, he was accustomed to draw a line of distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric side of religion; and although in point of character he deemed himself a pagan, his frame of mind was often a most pious one. He was too thoroughly a poet not to yield to frequent and changeful impressions, and thus it was that he failed at first to consider his convictions any hindrance to his acceptance of the office of bishop. Yet scarcely did he bear the title of bishop before he began to despise, from the bottom of his soul, all the ambiguity and incompleteness in which he found himself involved, and to which his duty toward his family held him bound. And so his misanthrophy and his distaste for life, which had arisen during the years of the crisis indicated, increased more and more. Energetic and loyal to duty as he was, he threw himself with all his might into the exterior affairs of his office; he became the civilizer and organizer of his bishopric, an ardent and enterprising school director, a superior and daring educator of his clergy. The purely civil standpoint he took in his conception of the Church is very similar to that assumed at the same time in England by Coleridge, who was upon the whole far less of a freethinker. "The former religious significance of the Church can, of course, never be re-established," says Tegnér, "for the system on which it depends has now slumbered during three centuries of history, and it would be of no avail whatever for one or another to act as though he believed in the somnambulist. But the Church has also a civil significance, and this can and must be supported as an integral part of the human social order. If this significance, too, be allowed to fall victim to torpidity and lethargy, I see no reason why the clergy, together with the entire religious apparatus, be not suppressed for the benefit of the state treasury." In order to comprehend how strong he must have felt the demands upon him to be the low degree of culture and morals of the clergy in Sweden of that time must be fully realized. On him it devolved to impart to die priests under him the elements of human culture, and to remove from office the worst drunkards among them. There had been given to him an Augean stable to clean.