The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which....

“ The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power. ”

Jacob Burckhardt

From : Judgments on History and Historians