Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 377

the veil is drawn aside from the economic life of the world, are remarkable. We are, as it were, transported back again into the midst of the standards and principles of the ancient civilisations. These have now all their exact counterparts in Europe in the economic conditions of the early medizeval town. We are, it is true, no longer in the presence of the military city-State, regarding all outsiders as subjects to be subdued and exploited by military force. The unit throughout Europe has become the economic life of the town. But it is the economic life of the town organised strictly on the principles of the ancient State. To use the striking words in which Schmoller summarises the result of his researches, ‘‘ Each separate town felt itself to be a privileged community, gaining right after right by struggles kept up for hundreds of years, and forcing its way, by negotiation and purchase, into one political and economic position after the other. The citizen-body looked upon itself as forming a whole, and a whole that was limited as narrowly as possible, and for ever bound together. It received into itself only the man who was able to contribute, who satisfied definite conditions, proved a certain amount of property, took an oath, and furnished security that he would Stay a certain number of years. . . . The omnipotence of the council ruled the economic life of the town, when in its prime, with scarcely any limit; it was supported in all its action by the most hard-hearted town selfishness and the keenest town patriotism,—whether it were to crush a competing neighbour or a competing suburb, to lay heavier fetters on the country around, to