man ever had
greater reserves within himself which rationalism, as it had been, had
never touched. It was he, therefore, who could lay the foundations for a
new and nobler philosophy for the future. The word _Aufklaerung_, which
the speech of the Fatherland furnished him, is a better word than ours.
It is a better word than the French _l'Illuminisme_, the Enlightenment.
Still we are apparently committed to the term Rationalism, although it
is not an altogether fortunate designation which the English-speaking
race has given to a tendency practically universal in the thinking of
Europe, from about 1650 to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Historically, the rationalistic movement was the necessary preliminary
for the modern period of European civilization as distinguished from the
ecclesiastically and theologically determined culture which had
prevailed up to that time. It marks the great cleft between the ancient
and mediaeval world of culture on the one hand and the modern world on
the other. The Reformation had but pushed ajar the door to the modern
world and then seemed in surprise and fear about to close it again. The
thread of the Renaissance was taken up again only in the Enlightenment.
The stream flowed underground which was yet to fertilise the modern
world.

We are here mainly concerned to note the breadth and universality of the
movement. It was a transformation of culture, a change in the principles
underlying civilisation, in all departments of life. It had indeed, as
one of its most general traits, the antagonism to ecclesiastical and
theological authority. Whatever it was doing, it was never without a
sidelong glance at religion. That was because the alleged divine right
of churches and states was the one might which it seemed everywhere
necessary to break. The conflict with ecclesiasticism, however, was
taken up also by Pietism, the other great spiritual force of the age.
This was in spite of the fact that the Pietists' view of religion was
the opposite of the rationalist view. Rationalism was characterised by
thorough-going antagonism to supernaturalism with all its consequences.
This arose from its zeal for the natural and the human, in a day when
all men, defenders and assailants of religion alike, accepted the dictum
that what was human could not be divine, the divine must necessarily be
the opposite of the human. In reality this general trait of opposition
to religion deceives us. It is superfi