We are here mainly concerned to note the breadth and universality of the movement. It was a transformation of culture, a change in the principles underlying civilisation, in all departments of life. It had indeed, as one of its most general traits, the antagonism to ecclesiastical and theological authority. Whatever it was doing, it was never without a sidelong glance at religion. That was because the alleged divine right of churches and states was the one might which it seemed everywhere necessary to break. The conflict with ecclesiasticism, however, was taken up also by Pietism, the other great spiritual force of the age. This was in spite of the fact that the Pietists' view of religion was the opposite of the rationalist view. Rationalism was characterised by thorough-going antagonism to supernaturalism with all its consequences. This arose from its zeal for the natural and the human, in a day when all men, defenders and assailants of religion alike, accepted the dictum that what was human could not be divine, the divine must necessarily be the opposite of the human. In reality this general trait of opposition to religion deceives us. It is superficial. In large part the rationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on one side if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. This is true in spite of the fact that the pot-house rationalism of Germany and France in the eighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood and the Church. On its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the bureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more solid work. It accomplished results which that other trivial aspect must not hide from us.