Note 30 — Chapter XIX · FREETHOUGHT IN THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES

Her annotations of Descartes are of little importance; but it is noteworthy that she accorded to his orthodox adherents a declaration that he had “greatly contributed” to her “glorious conversion” to the Catholic faith.30 Whatever favour she may have shown to liberty of thought in her youth, no important literary results could follow in the then state of Swedish culture, when the studies at even the new colleges were mainly confined to Latin and theology.31 The German Pufendorf, indeed, by his treatises On the Law of Nature and Nations and On the Duty of Man and Citizen (published at Lund, where he was professor, in 1672–73), did much to establish the utilitarian and naturalistic tendency in ethics which was at work at the same time in England; but his latent deism had no great influence even in Germany, his Scripture-citing orthodoxy countervailing it, although he argued for a separation of Church and State.32