the same point of view he considers the whole of the mental
attitude introduced by the Reformation.

"How can one," he says, "maintain of modern philosophy and of the
modern period that they have accomplished freedom when it has not
freed us from the power of objectivity? Or am I free from despots when
I no longer fear a personal tyrant, but am afraid of every outrage
upon the loyalty which I owe to him?"

This is just the case in the modern period. It only changes existing
objects, the actual ruler and so on, to an imagined one, that is, into
ideas for which the old respect not only has not been lost but has
increased in intensity. If a piece was taken off the idea of God and
the devil in their former gross realism, nevertheless only so much the
more attention has been devoted to our conceptions of them. "They are
free from devils, but evil has remained." To revolutionise the
existing State, to upset the existing laws, was once thought little
of, when it had once been determined to allow oneself to be no longer
imposed upon by what was tangible and existing; but to sin against the
conception of the State and not to submit to the conception of
law--who has ventured to do that? So men remained "citizens" and
"law-abiding, loyal men"; indeed, men thought themselves all the more
law-abiding in proportion as they more rationalistically did away with
the previous faulty law in order to do homage to the spirit of law. In
all this it is only the objects that have changed but which have
remained in their supremacy and authority; in short, men still
followed obedience, lived in reflection, and had an object upon which
they reflected, which they respected, and for which they felt awe and
fear. Men have done nothing else but changed things into ideas of
things, into thoughts and conceptions, and thus their dependence
became all the more innate and irrevocable. It is, for example, not
difficult to emancipate oneself from the commands of one's parents, or
to pay no heed to the warnings of an uncle or an aunt, or to refuse
the request of a brother or a sister; but the obedience thus given up
lies easily upon one's conscience, and the less one gives way to
individual sentiments, because one recognises them from a rational
point of view, and from our own reason to be unreasonable, the more
firmly does one cleave conscientiously to piety and family love, and
with greater difficulty does one forgive an offence against the idea
which o