ticable in commerce. He is on fire with the
love of gain. One sees clearly in him that famous _spiritus
capitalisticus_ of which some would have us believe that it dates only
from the time of the Renaissance. Here is an eleventh-century merchant,
associated with companions like himself, combining his purchases,
reckoning his profits, and, instead of hiding in a chest the money he
has gained, using it only to support and extend his business. More than
this, he does not hesitate to devote himself to operations which the
Church condemns. He is not disquieted by the theory of the just price;
the Decretum of Gratian disapproves in express terms of the speculations
which he practises: "Qui comparat rem ut illam ipsam integram et
immutatam dando lucretur, ille est mercator qui de templo Dei ejicitur".

After this, how can we see, in Godric and any of those who led the same
sort of life, anything else but capitalists? It is impossible to
maintain that these men conducted business only to supply their daily
wants, impossible not to see that their purpose is the constant
accumulation of goods, impossible to deny that, barbarous as we may
suppose them, they none the less possessed the comprehension, or, if one
prefers, had the instinct for commerce on the large scale.[14] Of the
organization of this commerce the life of Godric shows us already the
principal features, and the description which it gives us of them is the
more deserving of confidence because it is corroborated in the most
convincing fashion by many documents. It shows us, first of all, the
merchant coming from the country to establish himself in the town. But
the town is to him, so to speak, merely a basis of operations. He lives
there but little, save in the winter. As soon as the roads are
practicable and the sea open to navigation, he sets out. His commerce is
essentially a wandering commerce, and at the same time a collective one,
for the insecurity of the roads and the powerlessness of the solitary
individual compel him to have recourse to association. Grouped in gilds,
in hanses, in _caritates_, the associates take their merchandise in
convoy from town to town, presenting a spectacle entirely like that
which the caravans of the East still furnish in our day. They buy and
sell in common, dividing the profits in the ratio of their respective
investments in the expedition, and the trade they carry on in the
foreign markets is wholesale trade, and can only be that,