ABSTRACT
From the sixteenth century onward, the history of European thought is dominated by the Reformation. The Reformation was a complex many-sided movement, and owed its success to a variety of causes. The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. It's sacred history was Jewish, its theology was Greek, its government and canon law were, at least indirectly, Roman. Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, whose fundamental certainty is the existence of himself and his thought, from which the external world is to be inferred. With subjectivism in philosophy, anarchism in politics goes hand in hand. The romantic movement, in art, in literature, and in politics, is bound up with this subjective way of judging men, not as members of a community, but as aesthetically delightful objects of contemplation. Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments.
