...In Germany the battle against Catholicism was nothing else than a war begun by spiritualism when it perceived that it only reigned nominally and _de jure_; whereas sensualism, through conventional subterfuges, exercised the real sovereignty and ruled _de facto_. When this was perceived, the hawkers of indulgences were chased off, the pretty concubines of the priests were exchanged for plain but honest wedded wives, the charming Madonna pictures were demolished, and there reigned in certain localities a puritanism inimical to every gratification of the senses. In France, on the contrary, during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the war was begun by sensualism against Catholicism, when it saw that while it, sensualism, reigned _de facto_, yet every exercise of its sovereignty was restrained in the most aggravating manner by spiritualism, and stigmatised as illegitimate. While in Germany the battle was fought with chaste earnestness, in France it was waged with licentious witticisms, and while there theological disputations were in vogue, here many satires were the fashion. ...Truly, Jansenism had much more cause than Jesuitism to feel aggrieved at the delineation of Tartuffe, and Molière would be as obnoxious to the Methodists of to-day as to the Catholic devotees of his own time. It is just because of this that Molière is so great, for, like Aristophanes and Cervantes, he levelled his _persiflage_ not only at temporary follies, but also against that which is ever ridiculous--the inherent frailties of mankind. Voltaire, who always attacked only the temporary and the unessential, is in this respect inferior to Molière. ...Then why my aversion to spiritualism? Is it something so evil? By no means. Attar of roses is a precious article, and a small vial of it is refreshing, when one is doomed to pass one's days in the closely-locked apartments of the harem. But yet we would not have all the roses of life crushed and bruised in order to gain a few drops of the attar of roses, be they ever so consoling. We are like the nightingales, that delight in the rose itself, and derive as delicious a pleasure from the sight of the blushing, blooming flower as from its invisible fragrance. ...But there was one man at the Diet of Worms who, I am convinced, thought not of himself, but only of the sacred interests which he was there to champion. That man was Martin Luther, the poor monk whom Providence had selected to shatter the world-controlling power of the Roman Catholic Church, against which the mightiest emperors and most intrepid scholars had striven in vain. But Providence knows well on whose shoulders to impose its tasks; here not only intellectual but also physical strength was required. It needed a body steeled from youth through chastity and monkish discipline to bear the labour and vexations of such an office.