For something over five hundred years the Bohemians have been clearly conscious of their Bohemian nationality and much that is distinctive of them has been developed and is still being developed in them by this national history, and nothing of it can be understood except in the light of this historical influence. The two most influential forces have been John Hus, who made Bohemia Protestant a century before Luther, and who was burned at the stake in 1415; and Comenius the world educator, who was exiled for his connection with the Protestant Church of Bohemian Brethren. These two national heroes planted the seeds which differentiated the Bohemians from the rest of the Slavs in religious freedom and respect for education. Hus also was the symbol for the development of nationalism and the consequent revival of the language which have occupied such a large place in the attention of the Bohemian people. The two most characteristic expressions of these influences are now found in Nationalism and Free-thought, and no appreciation of the condition and purposes of the people can be complete without reckoning with these facts. From about 1400 for more than two hundred years Bohemia was a leader in European culture, but the Thirty Years’ War crushed her so that some claim that she has had no history since 1620. Count Lützow says that “Bohemia presents the nearly unique case of a country which was formerly almost entirely Protestant and has become almost entirely Catholic. The popular optimistic fallacy which maintains that in no country has the religious belief been entirely suppressed by persecution and brute force is disproved by the fate of Bohemia.” As a matter of fact, instead of being suppressed, it was smouldering during the centuries and now constitutes an amazing unanimity of mind and feeling among the nation in regard to religion. Immediately after the Act of Tolerance in 1781 there sprang up here and there churches which took up the old faith exactly where it had been left more than a hundred and fifty years before. Free-thinking is in part a philosophy, but it is more particularly a sign of national character.