It is in but few persons, and in rare periods, that the spirit of unrest, of dissatisfaction, of growth, manifests itself so strongly as to overcome the innate tendency toward static conformity. The mediæval period was essentially, for the most part, one of religious unity. For long, the two great ideas of the Empire and the Church had dominated men's minds. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, however, arose again, not only nationalities, but individualities. With the growth of the separate nations, developed simultaneously a new sense of individual responsibility in the face of the universe. For the average man during the Middle Ages, the moral, even more than the economic, life had been corporate. Outward conformity to the dogmas and usages of the only church which then represented Christ's Kingdom upon earth lulled his thoughts, and soothed his conscience. The necessity of belonging to the Church was not forced upon a man merely by fear of persecution or of the public opinion of his own little world. His belief in such a relation, and his ignoring the possibility of any other, had become as innate and instinctive as his belief in the physical laws of the universe by which he guided his daily life. It was not alone the historians of the period who were “content to be deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction,” as “the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened.”[153] The subtle poison had flowed through the veins of the entire social organism. Footnote 153: Lord Acton, _Lectures on Modern History_ (London, 1907), p. 5. As the idea of nationality grew and rooted itself in the mind of the masses, it attracted to itself, by a sort of mental gravitation, the institutions and thoughts of the peoples. Everywhere, the religious reformation had been closely allied with secular politics, and the reformed churches became national. As universal empire had gradually given place to nations, so the universal church was in part broken into state churches, but without any loosening of the bond which bound the individual to them. The idea of _the_ church persisted, and the average man considered separating himself from it almost as one would consider separating one's self from the civil state of to-day. It was almost as unthinkable and impossible to realize in practice. His life was so interwoven with it, his civil rights, as well as his religious duties, were so involved in his relations to it, that, even if he disagreed with its dogma, disliked its policy, or strove within it to alter both, he had no thought of leaving it. To do so would have been to constitute himself a religious anarch. Not only were the mental inhibitions to the development of such an idea greater than those operating in the case of political anarchy to-day, but the pains and penalties attending the action, both from law and from public opinion, were also greater.[154] Footnote 154: _Cf._ Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, p. 273