A similar opinion, in the most attenuated form, has been expressed by Salomon Reinach. "Instead of freedom of faith and thought the Reformation produced a kind of attenuated Catholicism. But the seeds of religious liberty were there, though it was only after two centuries that they blossomed and bore fruit, {736} thanks to the breach made by Luther in the ancient edifice of Rome."
[Sidenote: German nationalists]
A judicious estimate is offered by Imbart de la Tour, to the effect that, though the logical result of some of Luther's premises would have been individual religion and autonomy of conscience, as actually worked out, "his mystical doctrine of inner inspiration has no resemblance whatever to our subjectivism." His true originality was his personality which imposed on an optimistic society a pessimistic world-view. It is true that the revolution was profound and yet it was not modern: "the classic spirit, free institutions, democratic ideals, all these great forces by which we live are not the heritage of Luther."
As the wave of nationalism and militarism swept over Europe with the Bismarckian wars, men began to judge the Reformation as everything else by its relation, real or fancied, to racial superiority or power. Even in Germany scholars were not at all clear as to exactly what this relation was. Paul de Lagarde idealized the Middle Ages as showing the perfect expression of German character and he detested "the coarse, scolding Luther, who never saw further than his two hobnailed shoes, and who by his demagogy, brought in barbarism and split Germany into fragments." Nevertheless even he saw, at times, that the Reformation meant a triumph of nationalism, and found it significant that the Basques, who were not a nation, should have produced, in Loyola and Xavier, the two greatest champions of the anti-national church.
The tide soon started flowing the other way and scholars began to see clearly that in some sort the Reformation was a triumph of "Deutschtum" against the "Romanitas" of Latin religion and culture. Treitschke, as the representative of this school, trumpeted forth that "the Reformation arose from the good {737} German conscience," and that, "the Reformer of our church was the pioneer of the whole German nation on the road to a freer civilization." The dogma that might makes right was adopted at Berlin—as Acton wrote in 1886—and the mere fact that the Reformation was successful was accounted a proof of its rightness by historians like Waitz and Kurtz.
Naturally, all was not as bad as this. A rather attractive form of the thesis was presented by Karl Sell. Whereas, he thinks, Protestantism has died, or is dying, as a religion, it still exists as a mood, as bibliolatry, as a national and political cult, as a scientific and technical motive-power, and, last but not least, as the ethos and pathos of the Germanic peoples.
[Sidenote: The Great War]
In the Great War Luther was mobilized as one of the German national assets. Professor Gustav Kawerau and many others appealed to the Reformer's writings for inspiration and justification of their cause; and the German infantry sang "Ein' feste Burg" while marching to battle.
Even outside of Germany the war of 1870 meant, in many quarters, the defeat of the old liberalism and the rise of a new school inclined, even in America—witness Mahan—to see in armed force rather than in intellectual and moral ideas the decisive factors in history. Many scholars noticed, in this connection, the shift of power from the Catholic nations, led by France, to the Protestant peoples, Germany, England and America. Some, like Acton, though impressed by it, did not draw the conclusion ably presented by a Belgian, Emile de Laveleye, that the cause of national superiority lay in Protestantism, but it doubtless had a wide influence, partly unconscious, on the verdict of history.
[Sidenote: Reaction against German ideals]