The greatest and the most fatal error of most cities was to base their wealth upon commerce and industry, to the neglect of agriculture. They thus repeated the error which had once been committed by the cities of antique Greece, and they fell through it into the same crimes.(39) The estrangement of so many cities from the land necessarily drew them into a policy hostile to the land, which became more and more evident in the times of Edward the Third,(40) the French Jacqueries, the Hussite wars, and the Peasant War in Germany. On the other hand, a commercial policy involved them in distant enterprises. Colonies were founded by the Italians in the south-east, by German cities in the east, by Slavonian cities in the far northeast. Mercenary armies began to be kept for colonial wars, and soon for local defence as well. Loans were contacted to such an extent as to totally demoralize the citizens; and internal contests grew worse and worse at each election, during which the colonial politics in the interest of a few families was at stake. The division into rich and poor grew deeper, and in the sixteenth century, in each city, the royal authority found ready allies and support among the poor.
And there is yet another cause of the decay of communal institutions, which stands higher and lies deeper than all the above. The history of the medieval cities offers one of the most striking illustrations of the power of ideas and principles upon the destinies of mankind, and of the quite opposed results which are obtained when a deep modification of leading ideas has taken place. Self-reliance and federalism, the sovereignty of each group, and the construction of the political body from the simple to the composite, were the leading ideas in the eleventh century. But since that time the conceptions had entirely changed. The students of Roman law and the prelates of the Church, closely bound together since the time of Innocent the Third, had succeeded in paralyzing the idea--the antique Greek idea--which presided at the foundation of the cities. For two or three hundred years they taught from the pulpit, the University chair, and the judges' bench, that salvation must be sought for in a strongly-centralized State, placed under a semi-divine authority;(41) that one man can and must be the saviour of society, and that in the name of public salvation he can commit any violence: burn men and women at the stake, make them perish under indescribable tortures, plunge whole provinces into the most abject misery. Nor did they fail to give object lessons to this effect on a grand scale, and with an unheard-of cruelty, wherever the king's sword and the Church's fire, or both at once, could reach. By these teachings and examples, continually repeated and enforced upon public attention, the very minds of the citizens had been shaped into a new mould. They began to find no authority too extensive, no killing by degrees too cruel, once it was "for public safety." And, with this new direction of mind and this new belief in one man's power, the old federalist principle faded away, and the very creative genius of the masses died out. The Roman idea was victorious, and in such circumstances the centralized State had in the cities a ready prey.
Florence in the fifteenth century is typical of this change. Formerly a popular revolution was the signal of a new departure. Now, when the people, brought to despair, insurged, it had constructive ideas no more; no fresh idea came out of the movement. A thousand representatives were put into the Communal Council instead of 400; 100 men entered the signoria instead of 80. But a revolution of figures could be of no avail. The people's discontent was growing up, and new revolts followed. A saviour--the "tyran"--was appealed to; he massacred the rebels, but the disintegration of the communal body continued worse than ever. And when, after a new revolt, the people of Florence appealed to their most popular man, Gieronimo Savonarola, for advice, the monk's answer was:--"Oh, people mine, thou knowest that I cannot go into State affairs...purify thy soul, and if in such a disposition of mind thou reformest thy city, then, people of Florence, thou shalt have inaugurated the reform in all Italy!" Carnival masks and vicious books were burned, a law of charity and another against usurers were passed--and the democracy of Florence remained where it was. The old spirit had gone. By too much trusting to government, they had ceased to trust to themselves; they were unable to open new issues. The State had only to step in and to crush down their last liberties.
And yet, the current of mutual aid and support did not die out in the masses, it continued to flow even after that defeat. It rose up again with a formidable force, in answer to the communist appeals of the first propagandists of the reform, and it continued to exist even after the masses, having failed to realize the life which they hoped to inaugurate under the inspiration of a reformed religion, fell under the dominions of an autocratic power. It flows still even now, and it seeks its way to find out a new expression which would not be the State, nor the medieval city, nor the village community of the barbarians, nor the savage clan, but would proceed from all of them, and yet be superior to them in its wider and more deeply humane conceptions.
NOTES: 1. The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work yet which treats of the medieval city as of a whole. For the French Communes, Augustin Thierry's Lettres and Considerations sur l'histoire de France still remain classical, and Luchaire's Communes francaises is an excellent addition on the same lines. For the cities of Italy, the great work of Sismondi (Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age, Paris, 1826, 16 vols.), Leo and Botta's History of Italy, Ferrari's Revolutions d'Italie, and Hegel's Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Italien, are the chief sources of general information. For Germany we have Maurer's Stadteverfassung, Barthold's Geschichte der deutschen Stadte, and, of recent works, Hegel's Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr. Otto Kallsen's Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as also Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which, let us hope, will soon be translated into English (French translation in 1892). For Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertes communales (Bruxelles, 1869-78, 3 vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff's, Kostomaroff's and Sergievich's works. And finally, for England, we posses one of the best works on cities of a wider region in Mrs. J.R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols. London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local histories, and several excellent works of general or economical history which I have so often mentioned in this and the preceding chapter. The richness of literature consists, however, chiefly in separate, sometimes admirable, researches into the history of separate cities, especially Italian and German; the guilds; the land question; the economical principles of the time; the economical importance of guilds and crafts; the leagues between, cities (the Hansa); and communal art. An incredible wealth of information is contained in works of this second category, of which only some of the more important are named in these pages.
2. Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade (Zeitschrift für Volkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out that, according to Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered inviolable, because the trade between the Scythians and the northern tribes took place on their territory. A fugitive was sacred on their territory, and they were often asked to act as arbiters for their neighbours. See Appendix XI.
3. Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and the Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zopfl, Alterthumer des deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i. 316). The above explanation seems to be the more probable, but, of course, it must be tested by further research. It is also evident that, to use a Scotch expression, the "mercet cross" could be considered as an emblem of Church jurisdiction, but we find it both in bishop cities and in those in which the folkmote was sovereign.
4. For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross's exhaustive work, The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also Mrs. Green's remarks in Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. chaps. v. viii. x; and A. Doren's review of the subject in Schmoller's Forschungen, vol. xii. If the considerations indicated in the previous chapter (according to which trade was communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it will be permissible to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild merchant was a body entrusted with commerce in the interest of the whole city, and only gradually became a guild of merchants trading for themselves; while the merchant adventurers of this country, the Novgorod povolniki (free colonizers and merchants) and the mercati personati, would be those to whom it was left to open new markets and new branches of commerce for themselves. Altogether, it must be remarked that the origin of the mediaeval city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It was a result of many agencies in different degrees.
5. Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich's Wurzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances.
6. Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373-393, and ii. 66; quoted in Janssen's Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in Comptes et depenses de la construction du clocher de Saint-Nicolas a Fribourg en Suisse, comes to a similar conclusion. For Amiens, De Calonne's Vie Municipale, p. 99 and Appendix. For a thorough appreciation and graphical representation of the medieval wages in England and their value in bread and meat, see G. Steffen's excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth Century for 1891, and Studier ofver lonsystemets historia i England, Stockholm, 1895.
7. To quote but one example out of many which may be found in Schonberg's and Falke's works, the sixteen shoemaker workers (Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for erecting a screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of subscriptions, and 12 guldens out of their box, which money was worth, according to the best valuations, ten times its present value.
9. The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p. 303.
10. Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im XIV und XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq. At Paris, the day of labour varied from seven to eight hours in the winter to fourteen hours in summer in certain trades, while in others it was from eight to nine hours in winter, to from ten to twelve in Summer. All work was stopped on Saturdays and on about twenty-five other days (jours de commun de vile foire) at four o'clock, while on Sundays and thirty other holidays there was no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the medieval worker worked less hours, all taken, than the present-day worker (Dr. E. Martin Saint-Leon, Histoire des corporations, p. 121).
11. W. Stieda, "Hansische Vereinbarungen uber stadtisches Gewerbe im XIV und XV Jahrhundert," in Hansische Geschichtsblatter, Jahrgang 1886, p. 121. Schonberg's Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Zunfte; also, partly, Roscher.
12. See Toulmin Smith's deeply-felt remarks about the royal spoliation of the guilds, in Miss Smith's Introduction to English Guilds. In France the same royal spoliation and abolition of the guilds' jurisdiction was begun from 1306, and the final blow was struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c. pp. 52-54).
13. Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung medieval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schonberg (the editor of the well-known course of Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But, till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type went on for economical "science."
14. In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270-82, and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire de Florence, Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della repubblica di Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876, i. 58-80; translated into German). In Lyons, on the contrary, where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402, the latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating their own judges. The two parties came apparently to a compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in 1313; in Zurich in 1336; in Bern in 1363; in Braunschweig in 1374, and next year in Hamburg; in Lubeck in 1376-84; and so on. See Schmoller's Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkampfe and Strassburg's Bluthe; Brentano's Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871-72; Eb. Bain's Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887, pp. 26-47, 75, etc. As to Mr. Gross's opinion relative to the same struggles in England, see Mrs. Green's remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190-217; also the chapter on the Labour Question, and, in fact, the whole of this extremely interesting volume. Brentano's views on the crafts' struggles, expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay "On the History and Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and again confirmed by subsequent research.
15. To give but one example--Cambrai made its first revolution in 907, and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076. This charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before conquering the right to independence. Lyons--from 1195 to 1320.
16. See Tuetey, "Etude sur Le droit municipal...en Franche-Comte," in Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de Montbeliard, 2e serie, ii. 129 seq.
17. This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland, Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf.
18. Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence," in Kieff University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused Rumohr's Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter concerning the relations between the cities and the peasants requires much more study than has hitherto been done.
19. Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be always correct; but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated facts.
20. Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on the barons' side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and progress.
21. Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432.
22. Joh. Falke, Die Hansa Als Deutsche See-und Handelsmacht, Berlin, 1863, pp. 31, 55.
23. For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of these two cities--one of them bought by the enemy opened to him the gates.
24. See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii. 133 seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc.
25. On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's researches (Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the early peasants' guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman's "Die landlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249.
27. Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149); and so on.
28. See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c., p. 114.
29. Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle Ages, quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht's Deutsches wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, Bd. xii.; Sismondi's Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through their prosperity.
30. Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on this aspect of medieval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262), has pointed out the beauty of the mechanical relations in medieval buildings. "A new decorative construction was matured," he writes, "not thwarting and controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical construction. Every member, every moulding, becomes a sustainer of weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate parts." An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not be better characterized.
31. Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, seine Construction und Anstaltung, Koln, 1871.
32. The three statues are among the outer decorations of Notre Dame de Paris.
33. Mediaeval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity shops which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was painted, a statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to stand in its proper place in a monument of communal art. It lived there, it was part of a whole, and it contributed to give unity to the impression produced by the whole.
35. Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio Grande, which brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in 1179, i.e. after the conquest of independence, and it was ended in the thirteenth century. On the subsequent decay, see xvi. 355.
36. In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary schools, 1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550 to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.). It has more than once been suggested by authoritative writers that education stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg.
37. Cf. L. Ranke's excellent considerations upon the essence of Roman Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20-31. Also Sismondi's remarks upon the part played by the legistes in the constitution of royal authority, Histoire des Francais, Paris, 1826, viii. 85-99. The popular hatred against these "weise Doktoren und Beutelschneider des Volks" broke out with full force in the first years of the sixteenth century in the sermons of the early Reform movement.
38. Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle between the "old burghers" and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his work on the village communities of Switzerland, has indicated the same for village communities.
39. The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never discontinued in the Italian republics till the fifteenth century. Feeble traces of it are found also in Germany and elsewhere. See Cibrario. Della schiavitu e del servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868; Professor Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Izvestia of the Kieff University, 1885.
40. J.R. Green's History of the English People, London, 1878, i. 455.
41. See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at the Congress of Roncaglia in 1158.
CHAPTER VII MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. Mutual Aid institutions of the present time. The village community; its struggles for resisting its abolition by the State. Habits derived from the village-community life, retained in our modern villages. Switzerland, France, Germany, Russia.
The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities befell men--when whole countries were laid waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated by misery, or groaned under the yoke of tyranny--the same tendency continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns; it still kept them together, and in the long run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and devastating minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to work out a new social organization, adapted to a new phasis of development, its constructive genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure from that same ever-living tendency. New economical and social institutions, in so far as they were a creation of the masses, new ethical systems, and new religions, all have originated from the same source, and the ethical progress of our race, viewed in its broad lines, appears as a gradual extension of the mutual-aid principles from the tribe to always larger and larger agglomerations, so as to finally embrace one day the whole of mankind, without respect to its divers creeds, languages, and races.
After having passed through the savage tribe, and next through the village community, the Europeans came to work out in medieval times a new form of organization, which had the advantage of allowing great latitude for individual initiative, while it largely responded at the same time to man's need of mutual support. A federation of village communities, covered by a network of guilds and fraternities, was called into existence in the medieval cities. The immense results achieved under this new form of union--in well-being for all, in industries, art, science, and commerce--were discussed at some length in two preceding chapters, and an attempt was also made to show why, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the medieval republics--surrounded by domains of hostile feudal lords, unable to free the peasants from servitude, and gradually corrupted by ideas of Roman Caesarism--were doomed to become a prey to the growing military States.
However, before submitting for three centuries to come, to the all-absorbing authority of the State, the masses of the people made a formidable attempt at reconstructing society on the old basis of mutual aid and support. It is well known by this time that the great movement of the reform was not a mere revolt against the abuses of the Catholic Church. It had its constructive ideal as well, and that ideal was life in free, brotherly communities. Those of the early writings and sermons of the period which found most response with the masses were imbued with ideas of the economical and social brotherhood of mankind. The "Twelve Articles" and similar professions of faith, which were circulated among the German and Swiss peasants and artisans, maintained not only every one's right to interpret the Bible according to his own understanding, but also included the demand of communal lands being restored to the village communities and feudal servitudes being abolished, and they always alluded to the "true" faith--a faith of brotherhood. At the same time scores of thousands of men and women joined the communist fraternities of Moravia, giving them all their fortune and living in numerous and prosperous settlements constructed upon the principles of communism.(1) Only wholesale massacres by the thousand could put a stop to this widely-spread popular movement, and it was by the sword, the fire, and the rack that the young States secured their first and decisive victory over the masses of the people.(2) For the next three centuries the States, both on the Continent and in these islands, systematically weeded out all institutions in which the mutual-aid tendency had formerly found its expression. The village communities were bereft of their folkmotes, their courts and independent administration; their lands were confiscated. The guilds were spoliated of their possessions and liberties, and placed under the control, the fancy, and the bribery of the State's official. The cities were divested of their sovereignty, and the very springs of their inner life--the folkmote, the elected justices and administration, the sovereign parish and the sovereign guild--were annihilated; the State's functionary took possession of every link of what formerly was an organic whole. Under that fatal policy and the wars it engendered, whole regions, once populous and wealthy, were laid bare; rich cities became insignificant boroughs; the very roads which connected them with other cities became impracticable. Industry, art, and knowledge fell into decay. Political education, science, and law were rendered subservient to the idea of State centralization. It was taught in the Universities and from the pulpit that the institutions in which men formerly used to embody their needs of mutual support could not be tolerated in a properly organized State; that the State alone could represent the bonds of union between its subjects; that federalism and "particularism" were the enemies of progress, and the State was the only proper initiator of further development. By the end of the last century the kings on the Continent, the Parliament in these isles, and the revolutionary Convention in France, although they were at war with each other, agreed in asserting that no separate unions between citizens must exist within the State; that hard labour and death were the only suitable punishments to workers who dared to enter into "coalitions." "No state within the State!" The State alone, and the State's Church, must take care of matters of general interest, while the subjects must represent loose aggregations of individuals, connected by no particular bonds, bound to appeal to the Government each time that they feel a common need. Up to the middle of this century this was the theory and practice in Europe. Even commercial and industrial societies were looked at with suspicion. As to the workers, their unions were treated as unlawful almost within our own lifetime in this country and within the last twenty years on the Continent. The whole system of our State education was such that up to the present time, even in this country, a notable portion of society would treat as a revolutionary measure the concession of such rights as every one, freeman or serf, exercised five hundred years ago in the village folkmote, the guild, the parish, and the city.
The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other. In the guild--and in medieval times every man belonged to some guild or fraternity two "brothers" were bound to watch in turns a brother who had fallen ill; it would be sufficient now to give one's neighbour the address of the next paupers' hospital. In barbarian society, to assist at a fight between two men, arisen from a quarrel, and not to prevent it from taking a fatal issue, meant to be oneself treated as a murderer; but under the theory of the all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude: it is the policeman's business to interfere, or not. And while in a savage land, among the Hottentots, it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food, all that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve. The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is now triumphant all round in law, in science, in religion. It is the religion of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous Utopian. Science loudly proclaims that the struggle of each against all is the leading principle of nature, and of human societies as well. To that struggle Biology ascribes the progressive evolution of the animal world. History takes the same line of argument; and political economists, in their naive ignorance, trace all progress of modern industry and machinery to the "wonderful" effects of the same principle. The very religion of the pulpit is a religion of individualism, slightly mitigated by more or less charitable relations to one's neighbours, chiefly on Sundays. "Practical" men and theorists, men of science and religious preachers, lawyers and politicians, all agree upon one thing--that individualism may be more or less softened in its harshest effects by charity, but that it is the only secure basis for the maintenance of society and its ulterior progress.
It seems, therefore, hopeless to look for mutual-aid institutions and practices in modern society. What could remain of them? And yet, as soon as we try to ascertain how the millions of human beings live, and begin to study their everyday relations, we are struck with the immense part which the mutual-aid and mutual-support principles play even now-a-days in human life. Although the destruction of mutual-aid institutions has been going on in practice and theory, for full three or four hundred years, hundreds of millions of men continue to live under such institutions; they piously maintain them and endeavour to reconstitute them where they have ceased to exist. In our mutual relations every one of us has his moments of revolt against the fashionable individualistic creed of the day, and actions in which men are guided by their mutual aid inclinations constitute so great a part of our daily intercourse that if a stop to such actions could be put all further ethical progress would be stopped at once. Human society itself could not be maintained for even so much as the lifetime of one single generation. These facts, mostly neglected by sociologists and yet of the first importance for the life and further elevation of mankind, we are now going to analyze, beginning with the standing institutions of mutual support, and passing next to those acts of mutual aid which have their origin in personal or social sympathies.
When we cast a broad glance on the present constitution of European society we are struck at once with the fact that, although so much has been done to get rid of the village community, this form of union continues to exist to the extent we shall presently see, and that many attempts are now made either to reconstitute it in some shape or another or to find some substitute for it. The current theory as regards the village community is, that in Western Europe it has died out by a natural death, because the communal possession of the soil was found inconsistent with the modern requirements of agriculture. But the truth is that nowhere did the village community disappear of its own accord; everywhere, on the contrary, it took the ruling classes several centuries of persistent but not always successful efforts to abolish it and to confiscate the communal lands.