The same fatality appears, again, when we turn to the mystical theology of the German fourteenth-century school of Tauler and Eckhart, in which both Luther and some of our own day have seen a high inspiration. Here, perhaps, we come on the secret of the failure we are considering. Eckhart was a scholar, who had studied and taught at Paris, and ranked as "provincial" of the Dominican order for Saxony; and Tauler was his pupil before settling at Basle. Both men undoubtedly influenced the Brethren of the Free Spirit and others of the so-called Beghards and Beguins, before mentioned, in particular the sect who called themselves the "Friends of God"; and they may so be said to have affected society practically, since these movements aimed at a species of communism. But the essence of their theology was alien to that or any organized movement, and if lived up to would have dissolved it without the interference of the priests and others who under authority drove women of the Beguine movement from their homes and seized their poor goods. "If thou wouldst have the Creator," says Tauler, "thou must forego the creature. The less of the creature, the more of God. Therefore abjure all creatures, with all their consolations." Not thus were men in general to be taught to live more brotherlike. The rude world of the Middle Ages went on its way, unaffected in the main either by mysticism or by the movements which set up self-centred societies within society. It needed a more human spirit to affect humanity in mass. Such a human spirit, indeed, may be held to have shown itself in the movement set up in Florence by Girolamo Savonarola near the end of the fifteenth century. Savonarola was moved by a high concern for individual conduct; and his gospel was substantially that of an Ebionite Christian, wroth with all luxury as well as with all levity of life. Thus he wielded a great influence, setting up in the splendid Florence of the later Renaissance a forecast of the iron-bound Geneva of Calvin. It is no final impeachment of him to say that, having gone so far, he failed and fell; but it is clear that he could not have been a durable civilizing force. His influence was that of a fanatic, operating by contagion of excitement and superstitious fear, not that of an enlightener or a statesmanlike guide. To him amenity and luxury, art and vice, selfishness and skepticism, were alike anathema; and he set up in Florence a kind of pietistic reign of terror, driving impressionable believers to give up their pictures to the fire for peace' sake, and even letting others be forced to it by fear. On the great political need of the Italian cities, a fraternal federation, he had no light whatever; and we find him encouraging his fellow citizens in their fatal passion for dominating Pisa instead of making of her an ally and a friend. Lacking light, he finally lacked force; and when he fell, he fell utterly, leaving no enduring ideal or discipline to his countrymen.