t than the goal, and the tyranny of
dogma became at last unbearable. Troeltsch characterizes both his own
position and that of the Reformers when he enumerates among the ancient
dogmas taken over naively by Luther, that of the existence of a personal,
ethical God. Finely contrasting the ideals of Renaissance and
Reformation, [Sidenote: Renaissance vs. Reformation] he shows that the
former was naturalism, the latter an intensification of religion and of a
convinced other-worldliness, that while the ethic of the former was based
on "affirmation of life," that of the latter was based on "calling."
Even as compared with Catholicism, Troeltsch thinks, supererogatory works
were abolished because each Protestant Christian was bound to exert
himself to the utmost at all times. The learned professor hazards the
further opinion that the spirit of the Renaissance amalgamated better
with Catholicism and, after a period of quiescence, burst forth in the
"frightful explosion" of the Enlightenment and Revolution, both more
radical in Catholic countries than in Protestant. But Troeltsch is too
historically-minded to see in the Reformation only a reaction. He
believes that it contributed to the formation of the modern world by the
development of nationalism, individualism (qualified by the objectively
conceived sanction of Bible and Christian community), moral health, and,
{734} indirectly, by the introduction of the ideas of tolerance,
criticism, and religious progress. Moreover, it enriched the world with
the story of great personalities. Protestantism was better able to
absorb modern elements of political, social, scientific, artistic and
economic content, not because it was professedly more open to them, but
because it was weakened by the memory of one great revolt from authority.
But the great change in religion as in other matters came, Troeltsch is
fully convinced, in the eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Santayana]

If Troeltsch has the head of a skeptic with the heart of a Protestant,
Santayana's equally irreligious brain is biased by a sentimental sympathy
for the Catholicism in which he was trained. The essence of his
criticism of Luther, than whom, he once scornfully remarked, no one could
be more unintelligent, is that he moved away from the ideal of the
gospel. Saint Francis, like Jesus, was unworldly, disenchanted, ascetic;
Protestantism is remote from this spirit, for it is convinced of the
importance of success