ranks or estates_: the hereditary landed aristocracy, the citizens or
commercial class, and the peasantry or agricultural class. By _natural
ranks_ he means ranks which have their roots deep in the historical
structure of society, and are still, in the present, showing vitality
above ground; he means those great social groups which are not only
distinguished externally by their vocation, but essentially by their
mental character, their habits, their mode of life--by the principle they
represent in the historical development of society. In his conception of
the "Fourth Estate" he differs from the usual interpretation, according
to which it is simply equivalent to the Proletariat, or those who are
dependent on daily wages, whose only capital is their skill or bodily
strength--factory operatives, artisans, agricultural laborers, to whom
might be added, especially in Germany, the day-laborers with the quill,
the literary proletariat. This, Riehl observes, is a valid basis of
economical classification, but not of social classification. In his
view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum produced by the perpetual abrasion
of the other great social groups; it is the sign and result of the
decomposition which is commencing in the organic constitution of society.
Its elements are derived alike from the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and
the peasantry. It assembles under its banner the deserters of historical
society, and forms them into a terrible army, which is only just awaking
to the consciousness of its corporate power. The tendency of this Fourth
Estate, by the very process of its formation, is to do away with the
distinctive historical character of the other estates, and to resolve
their peculiar rank and vocation into a uniform social relation founded
on an abstract conception of society. According to Riehl's
classification, the day-laborers, whom the political economist designates
as the Fourth Estate, belong partly to the peasantry or agricultural
class, and partly to the citizens or commercial class.

Riehl considers, in the first place, the peasantry and aristocracy as the
"Forces of social persistence," and, in the second, the bourgeoisie and
the "fourth Estate" as the "Forces of social movement."

The aristocracy, he observes, is the only one among these four groups
which is denied by others besides Socialists to have any natural basis as
a separate rank. It is admitted that there was once an aristocracy which
had an