ys was in large part
accomplished the economic shift from medieval gild to modern production
by capital and wages. In those days wealth was piled up in the coffers
of the merchants, and a new power was {4} given to the life of the
individual, of the nation, and of the third estate. In those days the
monarchy of the Roman church was broken, and large portions of her
dominions seceded to form new organizations, governed by other powers
and animated by a different spirit.

[Sidenote: Antecedents of the Reformation]

Other generations have seen one revolution take place at a time, the
sixteenth century saw three, the Rise of Capitalism, the end of the
Renaissance, and the beginning of the Reformation. All three,
interacting, modifying each other, conflicting as they sometimes did,
were equally the consequences, in different fields, of antecedent
changes in man's circumstances. All life is an adaptation to
environment; and thus from every alteration in the conditions in which
man lives, usually made by his discovery of new resources or of
hitherto unknown natural laws, a change in his habits of life must
flow. Every revolution is but an adjustment to a fresh situation,
intellectual or material, or both.

[Sidenote: Economic]

Certainly, economic and psychological factors were alike operative in
producing the three revolutions. The most general economic force was
the change from "natural economy" to "money economy," _i.e._ from a
society in which payments were made chiefly by exchange of goods, and
by services, to one in which money was both the agent of exchange and
standard of value. In the Middle Ages production had been largely
co-operative; the land belonged to the village and was apportioned out
to each husbandman to till, or to all in common for pasture.
Manufacture and commerce were organized by the gild--a society of
equals, with the same course of labor and the same reward for each, and
with no distinction save that founded on seniority--apprentice,
workman, master-workman. But {5} in the later Middle Ages, and more
rapidly at their close, this system broke down under the necessity for
larger capital in production and the possibility of supplying it by the
increase of wealth and of banking technique that made possible
investment, rapid turn-over of capital, and corporate partnership. The
increase of wealth and the changed mode of its production has been in
large part the cause of three developments whi