One very desirable step in Catholic countries is that the priest should be given complete civil liberty, should be allowed to leave the Church if he choose, without becoming an outcast in society, should be free to marry, and to enjoy absolutely all the rights of citizenship. A second desirable step, and an essential one, is that the priest, who is one of the schoolmasters of the nation, should himself receive a higher education than he does to-day. The state, far from endeavouring to diminish the income of the priesthood—a very slight economy—might well, at need, augment it and exact diplomas analogous to those demanded of other instructors, and sufficient evidences of competence in extended historical and scientific inquiries and in religious history.[81] Already a number of priests in country districts are studying botany, mineralogy, and, in some instances, music. The ranks of the clergy contain a great quantity of live force, which is neutralized by a defective primary education, by lack of initiative, by lack of habits of freedom. Instead of endeavouring to separate church and state by a species of surgical operation, free-thinkers might well take their stand on the concordat, and profit by the fact that the state controls the income of the clergy, and endeavour to reawaken the priesthood to the conditions of modern life. In sociology, as in mechanics, it is sometimes easier to make use of the obstacles to one’s advancement than to try to batter them down. Whatever is, is in some measure useful; from the very fact that clerical education still maintains its existence it may be argued that it still plays a certain rôle in maintaining the social equilibrium, even if it be but a passive rôle, the rôle of counterpoise. But whatever possesses some degree of utility may well acquire a higher degree; whatever is may be transformed. We must not endeavour to destroy the priesthood but to transform it; to supply it with other practical and theoretical pursuits than the mechanical handling of the breviary. Between the literal religion which the majority of the French clergy teach, and a national and human ideal, there exist innumerable degrees which must be achieved successively and slowly, by a gradual intellectual progress, by an almost insensible widening of the intellectual horizon. Meanwhile, until the priest shall have passed through these successive degrees and have become aware of his essential superfluousness, it is good that he should make himself useful in the manner in which he still believes himself capable of being of use: but one thing should be exacted of him, that he should not make himself harmful by stepping outside of the limits within which he is properly confined.