But, from the moment the Christian principle, instead of entering as divine inspiration into the consciousness, sets itself up as a visible institution in society, it is evident that this organic union is broken, and the autonomy of the individual consciousness compromised. The religious element affirms itself on its own account, and imposes itself from without on the mind of the faithful as a divine authority. The ancient dualism, which the Gospel surmounted, reappears in a profounder form; it brings in its train a universal supernaturalism--that is to say, a mechanical conception of the relations between God and the world. Instead of a penetration we have a superposition of two elements. The clergy separates itself from the laity and superposes itself upon it as the necessary intermediary between earth and heaven. Religious society, constituted under the form of a government, superposes itself upon the civil society that it desires to rule; grace superposes itself upon nature, acting on it from above in the sacraments; the morality of the Church, in so far as it is a supernatural morality, superposes itself upon the natural morality of conscience; revelation upon reason; divine dogmas upon human science; the spiritual power of the priest upon the temporal power of the family and of the State. Everywhere, within and without, the division breaks out, and you see arise in man and in society an intestine struggle which will never end; for these two original forces that it brings into conflict, religion and nature, are equally powerful and eternal.