I have said that my treatment of the subject will be purely scientific.

A true scientific attitude, however, is nothing more than perfect clearness, and therefore the complete separation of our thinking from any preconceived notion.  For the sake of this complete absence of preconceived notions with which we must approach the subject, it will even be necessary, in the course of the discussion, to form a clear conception of what we really mean by the term “workingmen” or “working class.”  For even on this point we must not admit any preconceived notion, as if these terms were something perfectly well understood—­which is by no means the case.  The language of common life very frequently attaches at different times different conceptions to the words “workingman” or “working class,” and we must therefore, in due time, get a clear conception as to what meaning we will attach to these designations.

With this problem, however, we are not concerned at the present moment.  We must rather begin this presentation with a different question:  The working class is only one class among several which together form the body politic, and there have been workingmen at every historical period.  How, then, is it possible, and what does the statement mean, that a particular connection exists between the idea of this special definite class and the principle of the particular historical period in which we are living?

To understand this it is desirable to take a glance into history—­into the past, which properly interpreted, here, as everywhere, gives us the key to the present and points out to us an outline of the future.  In this retrospect we must be as brief as possible, or we shall be in danger (in the short time which is before us) of not reaching at all the essential subject of the discussion.  But even at this risk we shall at least be obliged to cast such a glance into the past, even if it is limited to the most general considerations, in order to understand the import of our question and of our subject.

If, then, we go back to the Middle Ages, we shall find, in general, that the same classes and divisions of the population which today compose the body politic were already in existence, although by no means so fully developed; but we find, furthermore, that at that time one class, one element, is predominate—­the landholding element.  It is land proprietorship which in the Middle Ages is the controlling influence in every particular, which has put its own special stamp upon all the institutions and upon the whole life of the time:  it must be pronounced the ruling principle of that period.

The reason why land ownership is the ruling principle of that time is a very simple one.  It lies—­at least this reason is quite sufficient for our present purposes—­in the economic conditions of the Middle Ages and in the state of development of production.  Commerce was then very slightly developed, manufactures still less.  The chief wealth of every community consisted, in greatest measure, in the products of agriculture.