Mental dexterity, rather than the Socratic pursuit after truth, was the aim of their dialectic; but on one occasion, when religion was being discussed, Bonaparte sounded a deeper note: looking up into the midnight vault of sky, he said to the philosophizing atheists: "Very ingenious, sirs, but who made all that ?" As a retort to the tongue-fencers, what could be better?
The appeal away from words to the star-studded canopy was irresistible: it affords a signal proof of what Carlyle has finely called his "instinct for nature" and his "ineradicable feeling for reality." This probably was the true man, lying deep under his Moslem shifts and Concordat bargainings.
That there was a tinge of superstition in Bonaparte's nature, such as usually appears in gifted scions of a coast-dwelling family, cannot be denied;[101] but his usual attitude towards religion was that of the political mechanician, not of the devotee, and even while professing the forms of fatalistic belief, he really subordinated them to his own designs.

To this profound calculation of the credulity of mankind we may probably refer his allusions to his star.

The present writer regards it as almost certain that his star was invoked in order to dazzle the vulgar herd.

Indeed, if we may trust Miot de Melito, the First Consul once confessed as much to a circle of friends.

"Caesar," he said, "was right to cite his good fortune and to appear to believe in it.