Whoever should wish to write a history of the religious conscience of Germans, would have to examine how it was, that after the war there arose in both confessions, precisely at the same time, a reaction of the heart against the ruling parties, which in spite of the difference of dogmas, shows a great similarity in the representations of this tendency. The need of elevation of soul, in a period which was poor in feeling, made the Protestant Spener, and the Catholic Spee and Scheffler into pietists, and mystics. It is true, the restraining power of the Protestant Church could no longer check the development of individuality. Through it the scientific man could easily satisfy himself, when he came, from the study of history, from observation of the heavens, from the secret of numbers, and through the weighing and measuring of the powers of the elements, to a new representation of the world of creation, and thereby to new views of the being of the Godhead. Thus the genius of the great Leibnitz was the growth of the Protestant Church. Any one also whose fancy took a wild flight, or to whom deep thought and meditation disclosed some peculiar aspect of the Deity, might easily release himself from Church-communion with his fellow-citizens, and unite himself perhaps with congenial spirits in some special community. Thus did Böhme, and the eccentric Kuhlmann, Zinzendorf, and Herrnhuter. This was incomparably more difficult in the Roman Catholic Church. Whoever attempted to go his own way, had to experience the anger of a strict mistress, and rarely did a powerful mind break loose from the restraint.