We see by degrees - in general outline or upon general principles 9 - that what is is no other than what must be.
There is no idea of government, but in each sept there is a head, who has attained that position by degrees on account of some tacitly admitted superiority and commands a limited respect and some obedience.
All those who wished for peace and orderly government came by degrees to oppose the Directors; and, seeing that the latter clung to Jacobinical catchwords and methods, public opinion tended to become "moderate" or even royalist.
Only by degrees did the events of the 19th of Brumaire stand out in their real significance; for the new consuls, installed at the Luxemburg palace, and somewhat later at the Tuileries, took care that the new constitution, which they along with the two commissions were now secretly drawing up, should not be promulgated until Paris and France had settled down to the ordinary life of pleasure and toil.
Napcleon was now able by degrees to dispense with all republican forms (the last to go was the Republican Calendar, which ceased on the 1st of January 1806), and the scene at the coronation in Notre Dame on the 2nd of December 1804 was frankly imperial in splendour and in the egotism which led Napoleon to wave aside the pope, Pius VII., at the supreme moment and crown himself.