Note 392 — Chapter IX · SOUL-IMAGE AND LIFE-FEELING

Luther placed practical activity (the day’s demands, as Goethe said) at the very centre of morale, and that is one of the main reasons why it was to the deeper natures that Protestantism appealed most cogently. Works of piety devoid of directional energy (in the sense that we give the words here) fell at once from the high esteem in which they had been sustained (as the Renaissance was sustained) by a relic of Southern feeling. On ethical grounds monasticism thenceforth falls into ever-increasing disrepute. In the Gothic Age entry into the cloister, the renunciation of care, deed and will, had been an act of the loftiest ethical character—the highest sacrifice that it was possible to imagine, that of life. But in the Baroque even Roman Catholics no longer felt thus about it. And the institutions, no longer of renunciation but merely of inactive comfort, went down before the spirit of the Enlightenment.