Protestant tendency, that of some liberals who find the Reformation
(quite naturally) too conservative for them. Laurent wrote in this sense
in 1862-70, and he was followed by one of the most thoughtful of
Protestant apologists, Charles Beard. [Sidenote: Beard] Beard saw in
the Reformation the subjective form of religion over against the
objectivity of Catholicism, and also, "the first great triumph of the
scientific spirit"--the {740} Renaissance, in fact, applied to theology.
And yet he found its work so imperfect and even hampering at the time he
wrote (1883) that the chief purpose of his book was to advocate a new
Reformation to bring Christianity in complete harmony with science.

[Sidenote: Philosophers]

Several philosophers have, more from tradition than creed, adopted the
Protestant standpoint. Eucken thinks that "the Reformation became the
animating soul of the modern world, the principle motive-force of its
progress. . . . In truth, every phase of modern life not directly or
indirectly connected with the Reformation has something insipid and
paltry about it." Windelband believes that the Reformation arose from
mysticism but conquered only by the power of the state, and that the
stamp of the conflict between the inner grace and the outward support is
of the _esse_ of Protestanism. William James was also in warm sympathy
with Luther who, he thought, "in his immense, manly way . . . stretched
the soul's imagination and saved theology from puerility." James added
that the Reformer also invented a morality, as new as romantic love in
literature, founded on a religious experience of despair breaking through
the old, pagan pride.

[Sidenote: Catholics]

While many Catholics, among them Maurenbrecher and Gasquet, labored
fruitfully in the field of the Reformation by uncovering new facts, few
or none of them had much new light to cast on the philosophy of the
period. Janssen [Sidenote: Janssen] brought to its perfection a new
method applied to a new field; the field was that of _Kulturgeschichte_,
the method that of letting the sources speak for themselves, but
naturally only those sources agreeable to the author's bias. In this way
he represented the fifteenth century as the great blossoming of the
German mind, and the Reformation as a blighting frost to both culture and
morality. Pastor's [Sidenote: Pastor] work, though dense with fresh
knowledge, offers no connected {741} theory. The Reformation, h