cial. In large part the
rationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on one side
if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. This is true in spite of the
fact that the pot-house rationalism of Germany and France in the
eighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood
and the Church. On its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the
bureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more
solid work. It accomplished results which that other trivial aspect must
not hide from us.

Troeltsch first in our own day has given us a satisfactory account of
the vast achievement of the movement in every department of human
life.[2] It annihilated the theological notion of the State. In the
period after the Thirty Years' War men began to question what had been
the purpose of it all. Diplomacy freed itself from Jesuitical and papal
notions. It turned preponderantly to commercial and economic aims. A
secular view of the purpose of God in history began to prevail in all
classes of society. The Grand Monarque was ready to proclaim the divine
right of the State which was himself. Still, not until the period of his
dotage did that claim bear any relation to what even he would have
called religion. Publicists, both Catholic and Protestant, sought to
recur to the _lex naturae_ in contradistinction with the old _lex
divina_. The natural rights of man, the rights of the people, the
rationally conditioned rights of the State, a natural, prudential,
utilitarian morality interested men. One of the consequences of this
theory of the State was a complete alteration in the thought of the
relation of State and Church. The nature of the Church itself as an
empirical institution in the midst of human society was subjected to the
same criticism with the State. Men saw the Church in a new light. As the
State was viewed as a kind of contract in men's social interest, so the
Church was regarded as but a voluntary association to care for their
religious interests. It was to be judged according to the practical
success with which it performed this function.

[Footnote 2: Troeltsch, Art. 'Aufklaerung' in Herzog-Hauck,
_Realencylopaedie_, 3 Aufl., Bd. ii., s. 225 f.]

Then also, in the economic and social field the rational spirit made
itself felt. Commerce and the growth of colonies, the extension of the
middle class, the redistribution of wealth, the growth of cities, the
dependence in relations of