not enter into the question of the
formation of capital itself, that is, of the sum total of the goods
employed by their possessor to produce more goods at a profit. It is the
capitalist alone, the holder of capital, who will hold our attention. My
purpose is simply to characterize, for the various epochs of economic
history, the nature of this capitalist and to search for his origin. I
have observed, in surveying this history from the beginning of the
Middle Ages to our own times, a very interesting phenomenon to which, so
it seems to me, attention has not yet been sufficiently called. I
believe that, for each period into which our economic history may be
divided, there is a distinct and separate class of capitalists. In other
words, the group of capitalists of a given epoch does not spring from
the capitalist group of the preceding epoch. At every change in economic
organization we find a breach of continuity. It is as if the capitalists
who have up to that time been active, recognize that they are incapable
of adapting, themselves to conditions which are evoked by needs hitherto
unknown and which call for methods hitherto unemployed. They withdraw
from the struggle and become an aristocracy, which if it again plays a
part in the course of affairs, does so in a passive manner only,
assuming the role of silent partners. In their place arise new men,
courageous and enterprising, who boldly permit themselves to be driven
by the wind actually blowing and who know how to trim their sails to
take advantage of it, until the day comes when, its direction changing
and disconcerting their manoeuvres, they in their turn pause and are
distanced by new craft having fresh forces and new directions. In short,
the permanence throughout the centuries of a capitalist class, the
result of a continuous development and changing itself to suit changing
circumstances, is not to be affirmed. On the contrary, there are as many
classes of capitalists as there are epochs in economic history. That
history does not present itself to the eye of the observer under the
guise of an inclined plane; it resembles rather a staircase, every step
of which rises abruptly above that which precedes it. We do not find
ourselves in the presence of a gentle and regular ascent, but of a
series of lifts.

In order to establish the validity of these generalizations it is of
course needful to control them by the observation of facts, and the
longer the period of ti