Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the religious, _i. e._ spiritual, track,--is more radical. For the former excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and _purifies_ the church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring _spirit_ into all things as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything, and so to _hallow_ everything worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor." The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he declares himself such in some passage or other: he "wants to remain a Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything. In everything there is reason, _i. e._ holy spirit, or "the real is rational." For the real is in fact everything, as in each thing, _e. g._ each lie, the truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, and the like.
Great "works of mind" were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone were the true disciples and consummators of _mind_.
How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before the _uncontrollable_. Can he keep off the impression that he is _helpless_ against this gigantic world? It is a fixed _law_ to which he must submit, it determines his _fate_. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward? Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of nature _indifferent_, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace utters the famous _Nil admirari_, by which he likewise announces the indifference of the _other_, the world; it is not to influence us, not to arouse our astonishment. And that _impavidum ferient ruinae_ expresses the very same _imperturbability_ as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear, though the earth should perish." In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty, for the Christian _contempt of the world_.
The _imperturbable_ spirit of "the wise man," with which the old world worked to prepare its end, now underwent an _inner perturbation_ against which no ataraxy, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and _exalted_ above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world,--foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were evolved in its own interior, and, after the _mechanical shock_ that comes from without had become ineffective, _chemical tensions_, that agitate within, began their wonderful play.