philosophical revolution commenced. Thus we see that wherever the Reformation penetrated, wherever it played an important part, whether victorious or vanquished, it had, as a general, predominant, and invariable result, a prodigious advancement to the activity and liberty of thought, a grand tendency to the emancipation of the human understanding from thraldom. And not only had the Reformation this constant result, but it aspired to none other; wherever that was obtained, it was contented, and very rarely sought for anything further, so much was it the groundwork of the event, its primitive and fundamental character! Thus in Germany, so far from demanding political liberty, it accepted, I will not say political servitude, but the absence of freedom. In England, it consented to the hierarchical constitution of the clergy, and the existence of a church as full of abuses as ever the Roman church was, and much more servile to power. How came it to pass that the Reformation, so fierce and stubborn in many respects, thus showed itself so accommodating and supple? Because it had achieved the general fact to which it tended--the abolition of the spiritual power, and the enfranchisement of human thought. I repeat, wherever it attained that object, it easily reconciled itself to all systems and situations. Now let us take the reverse side of this examination, and let us see what happened in those countries where the religious revolution did not penetrate, or was early stifled, or was unable to gain any development. History shows that the human mind was not enfranchised: two great countries, Spain and Italy, distinctly attest the fact. Whilst in those portions of Europe where the Reformation has held an important station, the human intellect has taken, in the three last centuries, an activity and freedom previously unknown, in those where it has not penetrated it has fallen in the same epoch into weakness and inertness; insomuch, that the trial and the counter-trial have been made, as it were, simultaneously, and produced analogous results. {207} Therefore the essential character of the Reformation, the most general consequence of its influence, the predominant fact of its destiny, was the outburst of thought and the abolition of absolute power in spiritual matters. I call it a _fact_, and I say so designedly. The emancipation of the human intellect was in reality, in the course of the Reformation, a fact rather than a principle, a result rather than an intention. The Reformation in this respect, I think, performed more than it had undertaken, more perhaps than it even wished. Unlike many other revolutions which have remained greatly in arrear of what they intended, in which the event has fallen far short of the design, the consequences of the Reformation surpassed its views. It is greater as an event than as a system; what it effected it did not fully foresee, nor would have fully avowed.