hat the cause of the Protestant
revolt in the corruption of the church was not accidental but
necessary, inasmuch as, at the Catholic stage of progress, that which
is adored must necessarily be sensuous, but at the lofty German level
the worshipper must look for God in the spirit and heart, that is, in
faith. The subjectivism of Luther is due to German sincerity
manifesting the self-consciousness of the world-spirit; his doctrine of
the eucharist, conservative as it seems to the rationalist, is in
reality a manifestation of the same spirituality, in the assertion of
an immediate relation of Christ to the soul. In short, the essence of
the Reformation is said to be that man in his very nature is destined
to be free, and all history since Luther's time is but a working out of
the implications of his position. If only the Germanic nations have
adopted Protestantism, it is because only they have reached the highest
state of spiritual development.

[Sidenote: Baur]

The philosopher's truest disciple was Ferdinand Christian Baur, of whom
it has been said that he rather deduced history than narrated it. With
much detail he filled in the outline offered by the master, in as far
as the subject of church history was concerned. He showed that the
Reformation (a term to which he objected, apparently preferring
Division, or Schism) was bound to come from antecedents already in full
operation before Luther. At most, he admitted, the {721} personal
factor was decisive of the time and place of the inevitable revolution,
but said that the most powerful personality would have been helpless
but for the popularity of the ideas expressed by him. Like Hegel, he
deduced the causes of the movement from the corruption of the medieval
church, and like him he regarded all later history as but the tide of
which the first wave broke in 1517. The true principle of the
movement, religious autonomy and subjective freedom, he believed, had
been achieved only for states in the sixteenth century, but thereafter
logically and necessarily came to be applied to individuals.

[Sidenote: Ranke]

From the Hegelian school came forth the best equipped historian the
world has ever seen. Save the highest quality of thought and emotion
that is the prerogative of poetic genius, Leopold von Ranke lacked
nothing of industry, of learning, of method and of talent to make him
the perfect narrator of the past. It was his idea to pursue history
for no purpos