Catholicism, which is altogether theocratic and authoritative, which pictures the church as an ideal commonwealth, has always most flourished in those countries where the Roman colonies left their more important traces. The reformation of Protestantism was a reversion to the ideal of the individual, which was that of ancient Teutonic faith. In more recent times Catholicism itself has modified the rigidity of its teachings in favor of the religion of sentiment, as it has been called, inaugurated by Chateaubriand, and which is that attractive form seen in the writings of Madame Swetchine and the La Ferronnais. These elevated souls throw a charm around the immolation of self, which the egotism of the Protestant rarely matches. Thus the ideal of the commonwealth is found in those creeds which give prominence to law, to ethics, and to sentiment, the altruistic elements of mind. It fails, because its authority is antagonistic to morality in that it impedes the search for the true. Neither is morality religion, for it deals with the relative, while religion should guide itself by the absolute. Every great religious teacher has violated the morality of his day. Even sentiment, attractive as it is, is no ground on which to build a church. It is, at best, one of the lower emotional planes of action. Love itself, which must be the kernel of every true religion, is not in earthly relations an altruistic sentiment. The measure and the source of all such love, is self-love. The creed which rejects this as its corner stone will build in vain. While, therefore, the advantages of organization and action are on the side of the faiths which see in religion a form of government, they present fewer momenta of religious thought than those which encourage the greater individuality. All forms and reforms, remarks Machiavelli, in one of his notes to Livy, have been brought about by the exertions of one man.[251-1] Religious reforms, especially, never have originated in majorities. The reformatory decrees of the Council of Trent are due to Martin Luther. Either ideal, raised to its maximum, not only fails to satisfy the religious sentiment, but puts upon it a forced meaning, and is therefore not what this sentiment asks. This may be illustrated by comparing two remarkable works, which, by a singular coincidence, were published in the same year, and which better than any others present these ideals pushed to their extreme. It is characteristic of them that neither professes to treat of religion, but of politics. The one is entitled, “_An Attempt to define the limits of Government_,” and is by Wilhelm von Humboldt; the other is the better known work of Auguste Comte, his “_System of Positive Polity_.”[252-1]