called on the philosophers for propaganda; and the
times were not propitious for the making of systematic
treatises. Even Hooker's treatise is also propaganda.
Tudor thinkers were not less great because they wrote
with a controversial rancour which we may find dis-
tasteful. 'Bitter and earnest writing', said Bacon, 'must
not hastily be condemned; for men cannot contend
civilly and without affectation [emotion] about things
which they hold dear and precious.' Bitterness was all
the more inevitable because sixteenth-century conflicts
were conflicts about the eternal verities. The Reforma-
tion lifted English politics on to a higher plane. It
ensured that for well over a century our political parties
were not mere factions and that their struggles were not
solely for place and power and interest but for rival con-
ceptions of human character and purpose. Fanaticism
and intolerance were the price paid for such grandeur.
Without the Reformation, English political thought
might well have developed too early into a concern with
means and not with ends, into the study of new
techniques for the gaining or keeping of political
power. That we have come to ask why power is justified
at all, that we have come to expect politicians to have
views on what ought to be, not merely on what can be
done, we owe to the entry of religious conflict into
politics. The conflict was cruel and bitter but at least
it taught us that, even in politics, we need not live by
bread alone and that society may itself pursue and must
allow its members to pursue the things that are not
Caesar's.

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