have had them in the past. We can also derive consolation from the fact that the numerous movements which, after momentary success, have immediately, or in a short time, come to naught again, which we find in history and which may cloud the superficial vision of many a patriot with gloomy forebodings, have never been revolutionary movements except in imagination. A true revolutionary movement, one which rests upon a really new idea, as the more thoughtful man can prove from history to his consolation, has never yet failed, at least not permanently.
I return to my main subject. If the Peasant Wars are revolutionary only in imagination, what was really and truly revolutionary at that time was the advance in manufacturing—the production of the middle class, the constantly developing division of labor, and the resulting wealth in capital, which accumulated exclusively in the hands of the middle class because it was just this class that devoted itself to production and reaped its profits.
It is usual to date the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern history from the Reformation—accordingly, from the year 1517. This is correct in the sense that, in the two centuries immediately following the Reformation, a slow, gradual, and unnoticed change took place, which completely transformed the aspect of society and accomplished within it a revolution that later, in 1789, was merely proclaimed, not actually produced, by the French Revolution.
Do you ask in what this transformation consisted?
In the legal position of the nobility there had been no change. Legally the nobility and the clergy had remained the two ruling classes, and the middle class the class universally kept down and oppressed. But although there had legally been no change, yet actually the reversal of conditions had been all the more tremendous.
By the production and accumulation of capital and of personal property, in contrast to real estate, in the hands of the middle class, the nobility had dwindled into com-
