It is easy to see how impostors proceed. It is enough to ask one's self what he would do in their place.
If I, entertaining views of this kind, had arrived in the midst of an ignorant population, and were to succeed by some extraordinary act or marvelous appearance in passing myself off as a supernatural being, I would claim to be a messenger from God, having an absolute control over the future destinies of men.
Then I would forbid all examination of my claims. I would go still further, and, as reason would be my most dangerous enemy, I would interdict the use of reason—at least as applied to this dangerous subject. I would taboo, as the savages say, this question, and all those connected with it. To agitate them, discuss them, or even think of them, should be an unpardonable crime.
Certainly it would be the acme of art thus to put the barrier of the taboo upon all intellectual avenues which might lead to the discovery of my imposture. What better guarantee of its perpetuity than to make even doubt sacrilege?
However, I would add accessory guarantees to this fundamental one. For instance, in order that knowledge might never be disseminated among the masses, I would appropriate to myself and my accomplices the monopoly of the sciences. I would hide them under the veil of a dead language and hieroglyphic writing; and, in order that no danger might take me unawares, I would be careful to invent some ceremony which day by day would give me access to the privacy of all consciences.
It would not be amiss for me to supply some of the real wants of my people, especially if by doing so I could add to my influence and authority. For instance, men need education and moral teaching, and I would be the source of both. Thus I would guide as I pleased the minds and hearts of my people. I would join morality to my authority by an indissoluble chain, and I would proclaim that one could not exist without the other, so that if any audacious individual attempted to meddle with a tabooed question, society, which cannot exist without morality, would feel the very earth tremble under its feet, and would turn its wrath upon the rash innovator.
When things have come to this pass, it is plain that these people are more mine than if they were my slaves. The slave curses his chain, but my people will bless theirs, and I shall succeed in stamping, not on their foreheads, but in the very centre of their consciences, the seal of slavery.
Public opinion alone can overturn such a structure of iniquity; but where can it begin, if each stone is tabooed? It is the work of time and the printing press.
God forbid that I should seek to disturb those consoling beliefs which link this life of sorrows to a life of felicity. But, that the irresistible longing which attracts us toward religion has been abused, no one, not even the Head of Christianity, can deny. There is, it seems to me, one sign by which you can know whether the people are or are not dupes. Examine religion and the priest, and see whether the priest is the instrument of religion, or religion the instrument of the priest.
If the priest is the instrument of religion, if his only thought is to disseminate its morality and its benefits on the earth, he will be gentle, tolerant, humble, charitable, and full of zeal; his life will reflect that of his divine model; he will preach liberty and equality among men, and peace and fraternity among nations; he will repel the allurements of temporal power, and will not ally himself with that which, of all things in this world, has the most need of restraint; he will be the man of the people, the man of good advice and tender consolations, the man of public opinion, the man of the Evangelist.