LUTHER
By F. Funck-Brentano
However little one may have been inclined to like the personality of Luther, one's appreciation of it goes up in read- ing this book (Cape, 12s. 6d.),---in itself no small test of a successful biography. It is as a biography that M. Funk- Brentano's work is to be judged ; as history it is less adequate. His approach to Luther's character is of the modern psychological school, and there are few great historical figures who more richly reward it. • Luther stands for all time as the type Of the German, at its best and at its worst : • he was generous, affable, essentially creative, good-tem-. percd • except when crazy, neurotic; morbid, -.Credulous, crude, repulsively phYsieal, hearty, of the soil : a mass of contradictiOnS and conffieting impulses. He had dot -the intellectual self-con- sCionsness, the Scepticism of an Erasmus, to realise how his doctrines, his whole theological position, were built up from the rationalisation of his -emotional impulses. M. Funek-Brentimo ;brine, this Out yery well—indeel it . ii., hia " line" on Luther. 141*s- aigocid setise. of the essentially German_ in Luther hti appeal to Gerinank ; but he Might have developed the reason why the revolt against Free Will should have so succeeded in Germany. Is it not a. revealing parallel to the German incapacity for political freedom ? History would seem to show that the Germans like to be under authority and Cannot bear freedom. The very title of Luther's great work against Erasinu4, De Servo Arbitrio, is significant. The translation is competent, but undis- tinguished.
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