RELATIONS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY 733 



which have always separated Catholicism and Lutheranism from 

 Calvinism, strengthen that anti-capitalistic attitude of the European 

 churches. 



Finally, in an old civilized .country, the "aristocracy of education," 

 the Bildungsaristokratie, as it likes to be called, a strong class 

 of the population without personal interest in economics, views 

 more skeptically and criticises more sharply the triumphal procession 

 of capitalism than can be naturally and justly the case in a country, 

 such, for instance, as the United States. 



As soon as intellectual and esthetic education has become a 

 profession, their representatives are bound by an inner affinity to all 

 the carriers of ancient social culture, because also for them that 

 profession cannot and must not be a source of heedless gain. They 

 look distrustfully upon the abolition of traditional conditions of the 

 community and upon the annihilation of all the innumerable ethical 

 and esthetic values which cling to them. They doubt if the dominion 

 of capital would give better, more lasting guaranties to personal lib- 

 erty and to the development of intellectual, esthetic, and social cul- 

 ture which they represent, than the aristocracy of the past has given. 

 They want to be ruled only by persons whose social culture they 

 consider equivalent to their own; therefore they prefer the dominion 

 of the economically independent aristocracy .to the dominion of the 

 professional politician. Thus it happens nowadays in the civilized 

 countries a peculiar and, in more than one respect, serious fact 

 that the representatives of the highest interests of culture turn their 

 eyes back, stand w 7 ith deep antipathy opposed to the inevitable 

 development of capitalism, and refuse to cooperate in the rearing of 

 the structure of the future. Moreover, the disciplined masses of 

 working-men created by capitalism are naturally inclined to unite in 

 a class party, if new districts for settlement are no longer available, 

 and if the working-man is conscious of being forced to remain inevi- 

 tably a proletarian, as long as he lives, which is bound to come about 

 sooner or later also in this country, or has already come. The pro- 

 gress of capitalism is not hemmed in by this; the working-man's 

 chances to gain political power are insignificant. Yet they weaken 

 the political power of the citizen and strengthen that of the citizen's 

 aristocratic adversaries. The downfall of the German civic liberalism 

 is based upon the joined effectiveness of these motives. Thus in old 

 countries, where such a rural community, aristocratically differ- 

 entiated, exists, a complex of social and political problems arises. 

 An American cannot understand the importance of agrarian questions 

 upon the European Continent, especially in Germany, yea, even 

 German politics, and must arrive at entirely wrong conclusions if he 

 does not keep before his eyes these great complexes. It is a peculiar 

 combination of motives which is effective in these old countries and 



