Against the Robots

“Regular armies are today the only thing preventing civilization from descending into barbarism. Today, a spectacle new in history, new in the world, unfolds before our eyes: when, gentlemen, has the world seen, except in our own time, that we are moving toward civilization through arms and toward barbarism through ideas? Well, the world is witnessing it at this very moment. This phenomenon, gentlemen, is so serious, so strange, that it demands some explanation from me. All true civilization stems from Christianity. This is so true that all civilization has been concentrated in the Christian sphere. Outside this sphere, there is no civilization; all is barbarism. And this is so true that before Christianity, there were no civilized peoples because the Roman and Greek peoples were not civilized peoples. They were cultivated peoples, which is very different.”
“Christianity civilized the world by doing these three things: it civilized the world by making authority inviolable, obedience sacred, and self-denial and sacrifice, or rather charity, divine. In this way, Christianity civilized nations. Now (and here is the solution to a great problem), the ideas of the inviolability of authority, the sanctity of obedience, and the divinity of sacrifice no longer exist in civil society: they reside in churches where the just and merciful God is worshipped, and in camps where the strong God, the God of battles, is worshipped under the symbols of glory. And because the Church and the army are the only institutions that have preserved the notions of the inviolability of authority, the sanctity of obedience, and the divinity of charity, they are also the two representatives of European civilization.”
“I do not know, gentlemen, if your attention has been drawn, as mine, to the resemblance, the near-identity, between the two persons who seem to be the most distinct, the most opposed: the resemblance between the priest and the soldier. Neither lives for themselves, nor do they live for their families. For both, their glory lies in sacrifice and self-denial. The soldier's duty is to safeguard the independence of civil society. The priest's duty is to safeguard the independence of religious society. The priest's duty is to die, to give his life like the good shepherd for his sheep. The soldier's duty, like a good brother, is to give his priestly life; the priesthood will appear to you, and indeed it is, as a true militia. If you consider the sanctity of the military profession, the army will appear to you as a true priesthood.” What would become of the world, what would become of civilization, what would become of Europe if there were no priests or soldiers?