This most important element of civilization was retained for humanity in the reformed Churches, and has become ever since the palladium of all progress, though even after the Peace of Westphalia protracted struggles were required to assert religious freedom.
The States of the Latin race on their side now put forward strong claims to the universal imperium in order to suppress the German ideas of freedom.

Spain first, then France: the two soon quarrelled among themselves about the predominance.

At the same time, in Germanized England a firs-class Protestant power was being developed, and the age of discoveries, which coincided roughly with the end of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, opened new and unsuspected paths to human intellect and human energy.

Political life also acquired a fresh stimulus.

Gradually a broad stream of immigrants poured into the newly-discovered districts of America, the northern part of which fell to the lot of the Germanic and the southern part to that of the Latin race.