he truly decisive steps were
taken in the sixteenth century.

It is doubtless incorrect to see either in the Reformation or in the
economic revolution a direct and simple cause of the other. They
interacted and to a certain extent joined forces; but to a greater
degree each sought to use the other, and each has at times been
credited, or blamed, with the results of the other's operations.
Contemporaries noticed the effects, mostly the bad effects, of the rise
of capitalism, and often mistakenly attributed them to the Reformation;
and the new kings of commerce were only too ready to hide behind the
mask of Protestantism while despoiling the church. Like other
historical forces, while easily separable in thought, the two movements
were usually inextricably interwoven in action.

[Sidenote: Rise of capitalism]

Capitalism supplanted gild-production because of its fitness as a
social instrument for the production and {516} storing of wealth. In
competition with capital the medieval communism succumbed in one line
of business after another--in banking, in trade, in mining, in industry
and finally in agriculture--because it was unable to produce the
results that capital produced. By the vast reward that the newer
system gave to individual enterprise, to technical improvement and to
investment, capitalism proved the aptest tool for the creation and
preservation of wealth ever devised. It is true that the manifold
multiplication of riches in the last four centuries is due primarily to
inventions for the exploitation of natural resources, but the
capitalistic method is ideally fitted for the utilization of these new
discoveries and for laying up of their increment for ultimate social
use. And this is an inestimable service to any society. Only a fairly
rich people can afford the luxuries of beauty, knowledge, and power,
that enhance the value of life and allow it to climb to ever greater
heights. To balance this service, it must be taken into account that
capitalism has lamentably failed justly to distribute rewards. Its
tendency is to intercept the greater part of the wealth it creates for
the benefit of a single class, and thereby to rob the rest of the
community of their due dividend.

[Sidenote: Primary cause of the capitalistic revolution]

So delicate is the adjustment of society that an apparently trivial new
factor will often upset the whole equilibrium and produce the most
incalculable results. Thus, the