Grey Eminence: A Study in Religion and Politics

by Aldous Huxley

Father Joseph had taken the place he was to occupy until his death in 1638 – the place of unofficial chief of staff for foreign affairs.

FINALLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY, Father Joseph had now surrendered to his destiny.

From now on he was primarily the collaborator of Richelieu

that summer of 1624 marked a decisive turning point.

good Capuchin, who mistrusted money as such.

How Richelieu would have received a similar offer is uncertain.

He was as good a Frenchman as Father Joseph; but in that age many good Frenchmen did not scruple to accept substantial gifts an...

not unequivocally condemn suc...

He felt no scruples about money and could indulge his covetousness without a qualm.

Such scruples as he had were mainly sexual.

He had a high opinion of continence – no doubt because he had a l...

Belial, it is evident, was no more dangerous to the Cardinal than to the friar.

But when it came to Mammon, the demon of wealth,

and Lucifer, the archfiend of pri...

the case was very d...

Richelieu was eaten up by a consuming l...

No less important were the triumphs he could buy with money

He also had an itch for literary fame.

Any old ‘manlier object’ was bait enough for Richelieu. To Father Joseph, on the contrary, these glittering tin minnows were of no interest.

Bait of a much subtler kind was required for him –

he lived his whole life in happy ignorance of the fact that religion consists in the exact opposite of self-reliance and self-esteem

in total self-surrender to a God who is not merely a very virtuous puritan gentleman, considerably magnified, but a being of a wholly different order, incommensurable with man even at his highest and most righteous;

That reason is that a son of God is what he is in virtue of his continual and perfect practice of God’s presence; and that the continual and perfect practice of God’s presence is impossible for a soul preoccupied with wealth or power.

A really intelligent Satan would have read the Lives of the saints and the writings of the mystics, and, having read, would have known how to deal with such sincere and devoted seekers of perfection as Father Joseph.

the real Satan is the element in every individual being which hinders that being from dying to its selfhood and becoming united with the reality from which it has been separated.

Richelieu’s, of a great statesman, with a similar stoic morality much less effectively in control of passions darker and more destructive.

The Satan who tempted Father Joseph into power politics was a different and much more interesting fiend.

the temptation to be mistaken about God’s will and to choose a lower at the expense of a higher duty;

and the temptation to believe that a disagreeable task must be good just because it was disagreeable.

for order and for what was then the sole guarantee of these two goods, the monarchy.

rationalized into a religious principle by

the newly popularized doctrine of the divine ...

that France is the instrument of Providence and French greatness a providential thing.’

Father Joseph had failed to see that vicarious ambition is as much of an obstacle to union as personal ambition

whereas personal ambition is regarded by all the moralists as undesirable, only the most advanced theocentrics have detected the perniciousness of vicarious ambition on behalf of a sect, nation or person.

Father Joseph had freed himself from personal ambition; but as the devoted servant of a providential France and a divinely appointed Louis XIII, he was able to go on indulging the passions connected with ambition, and to go on indulging them, what was more, without any sense of guilt.

To put it cynically, he could enjoy subconsciously the pleasures of malice, domination and glory, while retaining the conviction that he was doing the will of God.

What finally tempted Father Joseph to commit himself definitely to a political career was the fact that a political career was extremely arduous and, to a part at least of his nature, disagreeable.

But the contemplative who had spent so many hours of each day in communion with God could not but suffer from having henceforward to devote the greater number of those hours to affairs of state.

The Cardinal begins by making a sharp distinction between personal and public morality – between what Niebuhr would call ‘moral men and immoral society’.

the good man according to God must forgive offences against himself as soon as they are committed; but where offences have been committed against society, the good man according to men must do everything in his power to take vengeance.

The first and greatest obligation of a man is the salvation of his soul, which demands that vengeance should be left to God and not taken by the person offended.

The greatest obligation of kings is the repose of their subjects, the preservation in its entirety of their state, and of the reputation of their government;

it is necessary to punish all offences against the state so effectively that the severity of the vengeance may remove the ve...

even though failure so to behave might imperil his chances of eternal bliss.

His view of himself was at bottom very similar to that which the more tender-minded of communist sympathizers often take of Lenin –

that of a kind of secula...

he was prepared to run the appalling risk of going to hell.

‘lies awake at night that others may sleep fearlessly in the shadow of his watchings’ –

In describing himself as a Promethean saviour, a voluntary scapegoat suffering for the sake of the people, Richelieu omitted to mention those little items of the five-million-a-year income, the dukedom, the absolute power, the precedence over princes of the blood,