As it grows, the modern Prince upsets the entire system of intellectual and moral relations, for its development means precisely that every act is deemed useful or harmful, virtuous or wicked, depending on whether its point of reference is the modern Prince and whether it increases the Prince’s power or opposes it. The Prince takes the place, in peoples’ consciousness, of the divinity and of the categorical imperative; it becomes the basis of a modern secularism and of a complete secularization of