y external appearances, they have
considered the Peasant War a truly revolutionary movement.

Finally, in the third place, because at all ages this phenomenon is
frequently repeated--that men who do not think clearly (among whom are
often found those apparently most highly educated, even professors)
have fallen into the tremendous mistake of taking for a new
revolutionary principle what is only a more logical and clear
expression of the thought of a period and of institutions which are
just passing away.

Gentlemen, let me warn you against such men, who are revolutionists
only in their own imaginations, and such tendencies, because we shall
have them in the future as we have had them in the past. We can also
derive consolation from the fact that the numerous movements which,
after momentary success, have immediately, or in a short time, come to
naught again, which we find in history and which may cloud the
superficial vision of many a patriot with gloomy forebodings, have
never been revolutionary movements except in imagination. A true
revolutionary movement, one which rests upon a really new idea, as the
more thoughtful man can prove from history to his consolation, has
never yet failed, at least not permanently.

I return to my main subject. If the Peasant Wars are revolutionary
only in imagination, what was really and truly revolutionary at that
time was the advance in manufacturing--the production of the middle
class, the constantly developing division of labor, and the resulting
wealth in capital, which accumulated exclusively in the hands of the
middle class because it was just this class that devoted itself to
production and reaped its profits.

It is usual to date the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of
modern history from the Reformation--accordingly, from the year 1517.
This is correct in the sense that, in the two centuries immediately
following the Reformation, a slow, gradual, and unnoticed change took
place, which completely transformed the aspect of society and
accomplished within it a revolution that later, in 1789, was merely
proclaimed, not actually produced, by the French Revolution.

Do you ask in what this transformation consisted?

In the legal position of the nobility there had been no change.
Legally the nobility and the clergy had remained the two ruling
classes, and the middle class the class universally kept down and
oppressed. But although there had legally been no change, yet