too
utterly foreign to their ways of thinking to have found a defender. The
king they knew, and the people, and the Church; but the State (which the
modern socialist invokes) would have been an unimaginable thing.

In that age, therefore, we must not expect to find any fully-fledged
Socialism. We must be content to notice theories which are socialistic
rather than socialist.

CHAPTER II

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

So long as a man is in perfect health, the movements of his life-organs
are hardly perceptible to him. He becomes conscious of their existence
only when something has happened to obstruct their free play. So, again,
is it with the body politic, for just so long as things move easily and
without friction, hardly are anyone's thoughts stimulated in the
direction of social reform. But directly distress or disturbance begin
to be felt, public attention is awakened, and directed to the
consideration of actual conditions. Schemes are suggested, new ideas
broached. Hence, that there were at all in the Middle Ages men with
remedies to be applied to "the open sores of the world," makes us
realise that there must have been in mediaeval life much matter for
discontent. Perhaps not altogether unfortunately, the seeds of unrest
never need much care in sowing, for the human heart would else advance
but little towards "the perfect day." The rebels of history have been as
necessary as the theorists and the statesmen; indeed, but for the
rebels, the statesmen would probably have remained mere politicians.

Upon the ruins of the late Empire the Germanic races built up their
State. Out of the fragments of the older _villa_ they erected the
_manor_. No doubt this new social unit contained the strata of many
civilisations; but it will suffice here to recognise that, while it is
perhaps impossible to apportion out to each its own particular
contribution to the whole result, the manor must have been affected
quite considerably by Roman, Celt, and Teuton. The chief difference
which we notice between this older system and the conditions of modern
agricultural life--for the manor was pre-eminently a rural
organism--lies in the enormous part then played in the organisation of
society by the idea of Tenure. For, through all Western civilisation,
from the seventh century to the fourteenth, the personal equation was
largely merged in the territorial. One and all, master and man, lord and
tenant, were "tied to the soil." Within the m