I would like to conclude by posing a final question which, ( fear, may seem somewhat metaphysical: could rites of institution, whichever they may be, exercise their power (I think of the most obvious example, what Napoleon used to call 'baubles’, i.e. decorations and other distinctions) if they were not capable of giving at least the appearance of a meaning, a purpose, to those beings without a purpose who constitute humanity, of giving them the feeling of having a role or. quite simply, some importance, and thus tearing them from the clutches of insignificance? The veritable miracle produced by acts of institution lies undoubtedly in the fact that they manage to make consecrated individuals believe that (heir existence is justified, that their existence serves some purpose. But, through a kind of curse, because of the essentially diacritical, differential and distinctive nature of symbolic power, the rise of the distinguished class to Being has. as an inevitable counterpart, the slide of the complementary class into Nothingness or the lowest Being.