732 THE RURAL COMMUNITY 



can find its reward only in the high social standing of his vocation; 

 thus a character is stamped on him which is far from the interests of 

 money-making and places him on the side of the adversaries of their 

 dominion. If in old civilized countries, as in Germany, the necessity 

 of a strong army arises, which Germany needs to maintain its inde- 

 pendence, this means, for the political institutions, the support of 

 an hereditary dynasty. Also the decided follower of democratic insti- 

 tutions - - as I am - - cannot wish to remove it where it has been 

 preserved. For it is in military states, if not the only, yet the best, 

 historically indorsed form (because it is interested personally in 

 preservation of right and of a legal government), in which the 

 Caesarian dominion of the sword of military parvenus can be averted, 

 by which France is again and again menaced. Hereditary monarchy 



- one may judge about it theoretically as one wants to judge - 

 warrants to a state, which is forced to be a military state, the greatest 

 freedom of the citizens - - as great as it can be in a monarchy - - and 

 so long as the dynasty does not become degenerated, it will have the 

 political support of the majority of the nation. The English Parlia- 

 ment knew very well why it offered Cromwell the crown, and equally 

 well Cromwell's army knew why it prevented him from accepting it. 

 Such an hereditary, privileged dynasty has a natural affinity with 

 the holders of other social privileges. To these conservative forces 

 belongs in the European countries the church; first the Roman 

 Catholic Church, which, in European countries, even on account 

 of the multitude of its followers, is a power of quite different im- 

 portance and character that it possesses in Anglo-Saxon countries; 

 also the Lutheran Church. Both churches support the peasant, with 

 his conservative conduct of life, against the dominion of urban 

 rationalistic culture. The rustic movement of corporation stands, 

 to a great extent, under the guidance of clergymen, who are the only 

 ones capable for leadership in the rustic districts. Ecclesiastic, 

 political, and economic points of view are here intermingled. In 

 Belgium the rural corporations are means of the clerical party in 

 the conflict against the socialists; the latter are supported by the 

 consumers' unions and the productive associations. In Italy almost 

 nobody w T ho does not present his confessional certificate finds credit 

 with certain corporations. Likewise the aristocracy of a country 

 finds strong backing in the church, although the Catholic Church 

 is, in social regard, more democratic nowadays than formerly. The 

 church is pleased with patriarchal conditions of labor because they 

 are of personal human character, contrary to the purely commercial 

 relations which capitalism creates. The church possesses the senti- 

 ment that the relation between a lord and a serf, but not the bare 

 commercial conditions created by the labor market, can be developed 

 and penetrated ethically. Deep, historically conditioned contrasts, 



