To these we must add a fresh and very important section of
the intellectual class which also now for the first time acquired an
independent existence--to wit, that of the public official or
functionary. This change, although only one of many, is itself
specially striking as indicating the transition from the barbaric
civilization of the Middle Ages to the beginnings of the civilization
of the modern world. We have, in short, before us, as already
remarked, a period in which the Middle Ages, whilst still dominant,
have their force visibly sapped by the growth of a new life.

To sum up the chief features of this new life: Industrially, we have
the decline of the old system of production in the countryside in
which each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most part
self-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almost
entirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, and
where such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the form
of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the
beginnings of a national-market and distinct traces of that of a
world-market. In the towns the change was even still more marked. Here
we have a sudden and hothouse-like development of the influence of
money. The guild-system, originally designed for associations of
craftsmen, for which the chief object was the man and the work, and
not the mere acquirement of profit, was changing its character. The
guilds were becoming close corporations of privileged capitalists,
while a commercial capitalism, as already indicated, was raising its
head in all the larger centres. In consequence of this state of
things, the rapid development of the towns and of commerce, national
and international, and the economic backwardness of the country-side,
a landless proletariat was being formed, which meant on the one hand
an enormous increase in mendicancy of all kinds, and on the other the
creation of a permanent class of only casually-employed persons, whom
the towns absorbed indeed, but for the most part with a new form of
citizenship involving only the bare right of residence within the
walls. Similar social phenomena were, of course, manifesting
themselves contemporaneously in other parts of Europe; but in Germany
the change was more sudden than elsewhere, and was complicated by
special political circumstances.

The political and military functions of that for the mediaeval polity
of Germany, so importan