influence on the dispositions of the country people of Southern
Germany, as a barefooted Franciscan, who came among the people at Ulm
from the cloisters of the Franciscan monastery, Johann Eberlin von
Guenzburg. He had many of the qualities of a great agitator, and was one
of the most amiable among those that figure in the early period of the
Reformation. More than any other, he took up the social side of the
movement. In the year 1521, he published, anonymously, in the national
form of a small popular flying sheet, his ideal of a new state and a
new social life. The old claims which were subsequently drawn up by a
preacher, in twelve articles, for the peasantry, are to be found, with
many others, collectively in the fifteen "_Bundesgenossen_."[16] The
eloquence of Eberlin irresistibly influenced the listening multitudes;
a flow of language, a poetical strain, a genial warmth, and at the same
time a vein of good humour and of dramatic power, made him a favourite
wherever he appeared. To that was added a harmless self-complacency,
and just sufficient enjoyment of the present moment, as was necessary
to make his success valuable and the persecutions of his opponents
bearable. And yet he was only a dexterous demagogue. When he left his
order from honourable convictions, with a heart passionately excited by
the corruption of the church and the distress of the people, he could
hardly pass, even according to the standard of the time, for an
educated man; it was only by degrees that he became clear on certain
social questions; then he conscientiously endeavoured to recal his
former assertions; with whatever complacency he may speak of himself,
there is always a holy earnestness in him concerning the truth. He had,
withal, a quiet, aristocratic bias; he was the child of a citizen; his
connections were people of consideration, and even of noble origin;
coarse violence was contrary to his nature, in which a strong common
sense was incessantly at work to control the ebullition of his
feelings. He clung with great devotion to all his predecessors who had
advanced his education, especially to the Wittemberg reformers. After
he had restlessly roamed about the South of Germany for many years, he
went to Wittemberg; there Melancthon powerfully influenced the fiery
southern German; he became quieter, more moderate, and better
instructed. But later he belonged--like his monastic companion,
Heinrich von Kettenbach--to the preachers who collected round Hutten
and Sickengen. This personal union, which lasted up to Sickengen's
catastrophe, kept the national movement in a direction which could not
last. For a short time it appeared as if the religious and social
movement of South Germany, even if not led, could be made use of, by
the noble landed proprietors; it was an error into which both the
knights and their better friends fell; neither Hutten nor Sickengen had
sufficient strength or insight to win the country people really to
them. This came to light when Sickengen was overpowered by the
neighbouring princes. The peasants became the most zealous assistants
of the princes in persecuting the junkers of the Sickengen party and
burning their castles; this warfare may, indeed, be considered as the
prelude to the present war. It had unshackled the country people in the
neighbouring provinces, and accustomed them to the pulling down of
castles. A dialogue of the year 1524 has been preserved to us, in which
the fury of the country people against the nobles already breaks
forth.[17]
From that period the decided demagogues gained the ear of the peasants,
and the moderate amongst the popular leaders lost their supremacy.
Eberlin had once more, at Erfurt, an opportunity of showing, as a
mediator, the power of his eloquence over the revolted peasant hosts;
under its influence the assembled populace fell on their knees, pious
and penitent; but the weakness of his advice made this last endeavour
fruitless. He died the following year, and with him passed away most of
the poetry of the Reformation.
Cruelly was the revolt against the terrified princes punished, and the
smaller tyrants were the most eager to bring the conquered again under
their yoke. Yet in South Germany and Thuringia there was a real
improvement in the condition of the country people; for it happened at
a period in which a learned class of jurists spread over the country,
and the working of Roman law in Germany became everywhere perceptible.
The point of view taken by the jurists of the Roman school, of the
relations between the landed proprietors and their villeins, was indeed
not always favourable to the latter; for the lawyers were inclined to
fix every kind of subjection upon the peasant from the deficiency in
his right of property in his holding; but they were equally ready to
recognise his personal freedom. Thus, in the first half of the
sixteenth century, the old serfdom which still existed in a very harsh
form in many provinces was mitigated, and villeinage substituted.
Besides this, a more patriarchal feeling began to prevail among the
higher German Sovereigns, and in the new ordinances which they
projected in conjunction with their clergy, the welfare of the
peasantry was taken into consideration. This was the case above all
with the Wettiner princes in Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen; and,
lastly, with Elector August. The authority, also, of the Saxon
chancery, which had been established in Germany since the fifteenth
century, contributed essentially to this, by making the Saxon laws a
pattern for the rest of Germany.
But some ten years before the Thirty Years' War, an advance in the
pretensions of the nobles became apparent, at least in the provinces
beyond the Elbe; for example, in Pommerania and Silesia. Under weak
rulers the courtly influence of the nobility increased, the constant
money embarrassments of the princes raised the independence of the
States, which granted the taxes; and the peasants had no
representatives in the States, except in the Tyrol, East Friesland, the
old Bailiwick of Swabia, and a few small territories. The landed
proprietors indemnified themselves for the concessions made to the
princes by double exactions on the peasantry. Serfdom was formally
re-established in Pommerania in 1617.
It was just at this period of reaction that the Thirty Years' War broke
out. It devastated alike the houses of the nobles and the huts of the
peasants. It brought destruction on man and beast, and corrupted those
that were left.[18]
After the great war--in the period which will be here portrayed--a
struggle began on the part of the landed proprietors and the newly
established Government against the wild practices of the war time. The
countryman had learned to prefer the rusty gun to handling the plough.
He had become accustomed to perform court service, and his mind was not
rendered more docile by disbanded soldiers having settled themselves on
the ruins of the old village huts. The peasant lads and servants bore
themselves like knights, wearing jack-boots, caps faced with marten's
fur, hats with double bands, and coats of fine cloth; they carried
rifles and long-handled axes when they came together in the cities, or
assembled on Sundays. At one time perhaps these had been useful against
robbers and wild beasts; but it had become far more dangerous to the
nobles and their bailiffs, and still more insupportable to their
villeins,--it was always rigorously forbidden.[19] The settlement of
disbanded soldiers, who brought their prize money into the village, was
welcome; but whoever had once worn a soldier's dress revolted against
the heavy burdens of the bondsman. It was, therefore, established that
whoever had served under a banner became free from personal servitude;
only those who had been camp-followers continued as bondsmen. The
inhabitants of the different States had been interspersed during the
war; subjects had wilfully changed their dwellings, and established
themselves on other territories, with or without the permission of the
new lords of the manor. This was insupportable, and a right was given
to the landed proprietor to fetch them back; and if the new lord of the
manor thought it his interest to protect them, and refused to give them
up, force might be used to recover them. Thus the noblemen rode with
their attendants into a district to catch such of their villeins as had
escaped without pass-tickets.[20]--The opposition of the people must
have been violent, for the ordinances even in the provinces, where
villeinage was most strict--as, for example, in Silesia--were obliged
to recognise that the villeins were free people, and not slaves. But
this remained a theoretical proposition, and was seldom attended to in
the following century. The depopulation of the country, and the
deficiency in servants and labourers, was very injurious to the
landowner. All the villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men
or women; all such lodgers were to be taken before the magistracy, and
put into prison in case they should refuse domestic service, even if
they maintained themselves by any other occupation--such as labouring
for the peasant for daily hire, or carrying on business with money or
corn.[21] Through a whole generation we find, in the ordinances of the
territorial lords, bitter complaints against the malicious and wilful
menials who would not yield to their hard conditions, nor be content
with the pay assigned by law. It was forbidden to individual
proprietors to give more than the tax established by the provincial
States. Nevertheless, the conditions of service shortly after the war
are sometimes better than they were a hundred years later; in 1652
menials in Silesia had meat twice in the week; but in our century there
are provinces where they get it only three times in the year.[22] The
daily pay also was higher immediately after the war than in the
following century.
Thus was an iron yoke again bound slowly round the necks of the
undisciplined country people, closer and harder than before the war.
During the war small villages, and still more the single farms, which
had been so favorable to the independence of the peasants, had vanished
from the face of the earth; in the Palatinate, for example, and on the
hills of Franconia, they had been numerous, and even in the present day
their names cling to the soil. The village huts concentrated themselves
in the neighbourhood of the manor house, and control over the weak
community was easier when under the eye of the lord or his bailiff.
What was the course of their life in the time of our fathers will be
distinctly seen when one examines more closely the nature of their
service. A cursory glance at it will appear to the youth of the present
generation like a peep into a strange and fearful world. The conditions
under which the German country people suffered were undoubtedly
various. Special customs existed, not only in the provinces, but in
almost every community. If the names by which the different services
and imposts were designated were arranged they would form an unpleasant
vocabulary.[23] But, notwithstanding the difference in the names and
extent of these burdens, there was an unanimity throughout the whole of
Europe on the main points, which is, perhaps, more difficult to explain
than the deviations.
The tenths were the oldest tax upon the countryman--the tenth sheaf,
the tenth portion of slaughtered beasts, and even a tenth of wine,
vegetables and fruit. It was probably older in Western Germany than
Christianity, but the early church of the middle ages cunningly claimed
it on the authority of scripture. It did not, however, succeed in
retaining it only for itself; it was obliged to share it with the
rulers, and often with the noble landed proprietors. At last it was
paid by the agricultural peasant, either as a tax to the ruler or to
his landlord, and besides as the priest's tithe to his church. However
low his harvest yield might be valued, the tenth sheaf was far more
than the tenth share of his clear produce.
But the countryman had, in the first place, to render service to the
landed proprietor, both with his hands and with his team; in the
greatest part of Germany, in the middle ages, three days a week,--thus
he gave half of the working time of his life. Whoever was bound to keep
beasts of burden on his property was obliged to perform soccage, in the
working hours, with the agricultural implements and tools till sunset;
the poorer people had to do the same with hand labour--nay, according
to the obligations of their tenure, with two, four, or more hands, and
even the days were appointed by the landlords: they were well off if
during such labour they received food. These obligations of ancient
times were, in many cases, increased after the war by the encroachments
of the masters--chiefly in Eastern Germany. These soccage days were
arbitrarily divided into half or even quarter days, and thereby the
hindrance to the countryman and the disorder to his own farm were
considerably increased. The number of the days was also increased. Such
was the case even in the century which we, with just feelings of pride,
call the humane. In the year 1790, just when Goethe's "Torquato Tasso"
made its first appearance in the refined court of Saxony, the peasants
of Meissen rose against the landowners, because they had so
immoderately increased the service that their villeins seldom had a day
free for their own work.[24] Again in 1799, when Schiller's
"Wallenstein" was exciting the enthusiasm of the warlike nobility of
Berlin, Frederick William III. was obliged to issue a cabinet order,
enjoining on his nobility not to lay claim to the soccage of the
peasants more than three days in the week, and to treat their people
with equity.
The second burden on the villeins was the tax on change of property by
death or transfer; the heriot and fine on alienation. The best horse
and the best ox were once the price which the heir of a property had to
pay to the landowner for his fief. This tax was long ago changed into
money. But though in the sixteenth century, even in countries where the
peasant was heavily oppressed, the provincial ordinances allowed that
peasant's property might be bought and sold, and that the lord of the
peasant who sold could take no deduction upon it,[25] yet in the same
province in 1617, before the Thirty Years' War, it was established that
landlords might compel their villeins against their will to sell their
property, and that in case no purchaser should be found they themselves
might buy it at two-thirds of the tax. It was under Frederick the Great
that the inheritance and rights of property of villeins were first
secured to them in most of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia.
This ordinance helped to put an end to a burden on the country people
which threatened to depopulate the country. For in the former century,
after the landowners had resolved to increase the revenue of their
estates, they found it advantageous to rid themselves of some of their
villeins, whose holdings they attached to their own property. The poor
people, thus driven from their homes, fell into misery; and the burdens
became quite unbearable to the remaining villeins, for they were
expected by the landed proprietor to cultivate those former holdings,
whose possessors had hitherto by their labour assisted in the
cultivation of the whole estate. This system of ejection had become
particularly bad in the east of Germany. When Frederick II. conquered
Silesia there were many thousand farms without occupiers; the huts lay
in ruins, and the fields were in the hands of the landed proprietors.
All the separate homesteads had to be reformed and reoccupied,
furnished with cattle and implements, and given up to the farmer as his
own heritable property. In Ruegen this grievance occasioned a rising of
the peasantry, in the youth of Ernst Moritz Arndt; soldiers were sent
thither, and the rioters were put in prison; the peasants endeavoured
to revenge themselves for this by laying in wait for and slaying
individual noblemen. In the same way in Electoral Saxony as late as
1790 this grievance occasioned a revolt.
The children also of villeins were subject to compulsory service. If
they were capable of work they were brought before the authorities,
and, if these demanded it, had to serve some time, frequently three
years, on the farm. To serve in other places it was necessary to have a
permit, which must be bought. Even those who had already served
elsewhere had once a year--frequently about Christmas--to present
themselves to the lord of the manor for choice. If the child of a
villein entered into a trade or any other occupation, a sum had to be
paid to the authorities for a letter of permission. It was considered a
mitigation of the old remains of feudalism, when it was decided that
the daughters of peasants might marry on to other properties without
indemnifying their lord. But then the new lord had to greet the other
in a friendly letter in acknowledgment of this emancipation.[26] The
price which the villein had to give for the emancipation of himself and
his family varied extremely, according to the period and the district.
Under Frederick II. it was reduced in Silesia to one ducat per head.
But this was an unusually favourable rate for the villein. In Ruegen, at
a still later date, the emancipation was left to the valuation of the
proprietor; it could even be refused: a fine-looking youth had there to
pay full a hundred and fifty, and a pretty girl fifty or sixty,
thalers.
But the peasant was employed in other ways by the landed proprietor. He
was bound to aid, with his hands and teams, in the cultivation of the
estate; he was also bound to act as messenger. Whoever wished to go to
the town had first to ask the bailiff and lord of the manor whether
they had any orders. No householder could, except in special cases,
remain a night out of the village without the previous sanction of the
magistrate of the place. He was obliged to furnish a night watch of two
men for the nobleman's mansion. He had, when a child of the lord of the
manor was to be married, to bring a contribution of corn, small cattle,
honey, wax, and linen to the castle; finally, he had almost everywhere
to carry to his lord his rent-hens and eggs, the old symbol of his
dependence for house and farm.
But what was still more repugnant to the German peasant than many
greater burdens, was the landlord's right of chase over his fields. The
fearful tyranny with which the right of chase was practised by the
German princes in the middle ages, was renewed after the Thirty Years'
War. The peasant was forbidden to carry a gun, and poachers were shot
down. Where the cultivated ground bordered on the larger woods, or
where the lord of the manor held the supreme right of chase, a secret
and often bloody war was carried on for centuries betwixt the foresters
and poachers. As long as wolves continued to prowl about the villages,
the irritated peasant dug holes round the margin of the wood which he
covered with branches, and the bottom of them was studded with pointed
stakes. He called them wolf-pits, but they were well known to the law
as game-traps, and were forbidden under severe penalties. He ventured
to let such portions of ground as were most exposed to be injured by
game, to soldiers or cities, but that also was forbidden him; he
endeavoured to defend his fields by hedges, and his hedges were broken
down. In the Erzgebirge of Saxony the peasants, in the former century,
had watched by their ripening corn; then huts were built on the fields,
fires were lighted in the night, the watchers called out and beat the
drum, and their dogs barked; but the game at last became accustomed to
these alarms, and feared neither peasant nor dog. In Electoral Saxony,
at the end of a former century, under a mild government, where a
moderate tax might be paid as indemnity for damage to game, it was
forbidden to erect fences for fields above a certain height, or to
employ pointed stakes, that the game might not be injured, nor
prevented seeking its support on the fields, till at last fourteen
communities in the Hohnstein bailiwick in a state of exasperation
combined for a general hunt, and frightened the game over the frontier.
The logs which the sheep dogs wore round their necks were not
sufficient to hinder them from hurting the hares, so they were held by
cords on the fields. But the countrymen were bound, when the lord of
the manor went to the chase, to go behind the nets and, as beaters, to
swing the rattles. The coursing, moreover, spoilt his fields, as the
riders with their greyhounds uprooted and trampled on the seed.
To these burdens, which were common to all, were added numerous local
restrictions, of which only some of the more widely diffused will be
here mentioned. The number of cattle that villeins were permitted to
keep was frequently prescribed to them according to the extent of their
holdings. A portion of the pasture land upon his holding before seed
time, and of the produce after the harvest, belonged to the landowner.
This right, to which pretensions had been already made in the middle
ages, became a severe plague in the last century, when the noblemen
began increasing their flocks of sheep. For they made demands on the
peasants' fields generally, when fodder for cattle was failing: how,
then, could the peasants maintain their own animals?
As early as 1617 it was held as a maxim in Silesia, that peasants must
not keep sheep unless they possessed an old authorisation for it. The
keeping of goats was altogether forbidden in many places. This old
prohibition is one of the reasons why the poor in wide districts of
Eastern Germany are deprived of these useful animals. Elector August of
Saxony in 1560 denounced in his ordinances the pigeons of the peasants,
and since that time they have been prohibited in other provincial
ordinances. Other tyrannies were devised by the love of game. Shortly
after the war it was held to be the duty of peasants to offer
everything saleable, in the first instance, to the lord of the
manor,--dung, wool, honey, and even eggs and poultry: if the
authorities would not take his goods, he was bound to expose them for a
fixed period in the nearest town; it was only then that the sale became
free. But it was truly monstrous, when the authorities compelled their
subjects to buy goods from the manorial property which they did not
need. These barbarisms were quite common, at least in the East of
Germany, after 1650, especially in Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. When
the great proprietors drew their ponds and could not sell the fish, the
villeins were obliged to take them, in proportion to their means, at a
fixed rate. The same was the case with butter, cheese, corn, and
cattle. This was the cause of so many of the country people in Bohemia
becoming small traders, as they had to convey these goods into
neighbouring countries, often to their own great loss.[27] In vain did
the magistrates in Silesia in 1716 endeavour to check this abuse.[28]
We will only mention here the worst tyranny of all. The nobleman had
seigneurial rights: he decreed through the justices, who were dependent
on him, the punishments of police offences: fines, imprisonment, and
corporal punishment. He was also in the habit of using the stick to the
villeins when they were at work. Undoubtedly there was already in the
sixteenth century, in the provincial ordinances, a humane provision,
which prohibited the nobles from striking their villeins; but in the
two following centuries this prohibition was little attended to. When
Frederick the Great re-organized Silesia, he gave the peasants the
right of making complaint to the government against severe bodily
punishment! And this was considered a progress!
But other burdens also weighed upon the life of the peasant. For,
beside the landowner, the territorial ruler also demanded his impost or
contribution, a land-tax or poll-tax; he could impress the son of the
peasant under his banner, and demand waggons and gear for relays in
time of war. And again, above the territorial ruler, was the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation, which claimed in those parts of Germany
where the constitution of the circles was still in force, a quota for
their exchequers.
The peasants, however, were not everywhere under the curse of bondage.
In the old domain of the Ripuarian Franks, the provinces on the other
side of the Rhine from Cleves to the Moselle, and the Grafschaft of
Mark, Essen, Werden, and Berg, had already in the middle ages freed
themselves from bondage: those who had not property as landowners were
freemen with leases for life. In the rest of Germany, freedom had taken
refuge in the southern and northern frontiers, on the coasts of the
North Sea and among the Alps. East Friesland, the marsh lands on the
coasts of the Weser and the Elbe up to Ditmarschen,--those almost
unconquerable settlements of sturdy peasant communities,--have remained
free from the most ancient times. In the south, the Tyrol and the
neighbouring Alps, at least the greatest portion of them, were occupied
by free country-people; in Upper Austria also the free peasantry were
numerous; and in Steiermark the tenths, which was the chief tax paid to
the landed proprietors, was less oppressive than soccage was elsewhere.
Wherever the arable land was scarce, and the mountain pastures afforded
sustenance to the inhabitants, the legal condition of the lower orders
was better. On the other hand, in the countries of old Saxony from the
time of the Carlovingians, with the exception of a few free peasant
holdings, a severe state of bondage had been developed. The
Brunswickers, the dwellers on the Church lands of Bremen and Verden,
were in the most favourable condition, those of Hildesheim and the
Grafschaft of Hoya in the worst. In the bishopric of Muenster the
soccage service of villeins was generally changed into a moderate money
payment; the only thing that pressed heavily on them was the compulsory
leading, and the necessity of buying exemption from their burdens. On
the other hand, the right of the landed proprietor over the inheritance
of villeins existed to the greatest extent. As late as the year 1800
the country-people, who--exceptionally--desired to save money,
endeavoured to preserve their property to their heirs, by fictitious
transactions with the citizens; consequently more than a fourth portion
of the Muenster land remained uncultivated. A similar condition, in a
somewhat milder form, existed in the bishopric of Osnabruck. Among the
races of the interior, Hessians, Thuringians, Bavarians, Suabians, and
Allemanni, the number of free peasants was continually decreasing
during the whole of the middle ages: it was only in Upper Bavaria that
they still formed a powerful part of the population. In Thuringia also
the number of freemen was not inconsiderable. There the rule of the
princes over the serf peasantry was lenient.
Far worse, except in a large part of Holstein, was the condition of all
the countries east of the Elbe,--in fact wherever Germans colonized
Sclave countries, that is almost half present Germany; but worst of all
was the life of the villeins in Bohemia and Moravia, in Pomerania and
Mecklenberg: in the last province villeinage is not yet abolished. It
was in these countries that villeinage became more oppressive after the
Thirty Years' War; only the free peasants, and the "_Erb-und
Gerichtsscholtiseien_," as they were still called in memory of the
circumstances of the old Germanization, formed themselves into a pauper
aristocracy.
In the last century it might easily be perceived, from the agriculture
and the prosperity of the villagers, whether they were freemen or
serfs; and even now we may sometimes still discover, from the
intelligence and personal appearance of the present race, what was the
condition of their fathers. The peasants on the Lower Rhine, the
Westphalian inhabitants of the marshes, the East Frieslanders, the
Upper Austrians and Upper Bavarians, attained a certain degree of
prosperity soon after the war; on the other hand, the remaining
Bavarians, about the year 1700, complained that the third portion of
their fields lay waste, and we learn of Bohemia in 1730 that the fourth
part of the ground which had been under culture before the Thirty
Years' War was overgrown with wood. The value of land there was lower
by one half than in the other provinces.
Undoubtedly those freemen were to be envied who felt the advantage of
their better position, but only a small portion were so fortunate.
Generally, even in the eighteenth century, freemen with little or no
land of their own, preferred being received as villeins on some great
landed property. When Frederick I. of Prussia, shortly after 1700,
wished to free the serfs in Pomerania, they refused it, because they
considered the new duties imposed upon them more severe than what they
had hitherto borne. And in fact the free peasants were scarcely less
burdened with new service than those who had been the villeins of the
old time.
It is difficult to judge impartially of the human condition which
developed itself under this oppression. For such a life looks very
different in daily intercourse, to what it does in the statute-book.
Much that appears insupportable to us was made bearable by ancient
custom. Undoubtedly the kind-hearted benevolence of the nobles, of old
families who had grown up with their country-people through many
generations, mitigated the severity of servitude, and a cordial
connexion existed between master and serfs. Still more frequently the
brutal selfishness of the masters was softened and kept within bounds
by that prudence which now influences the American slaveholders. The
landed proprietor and his family passed their lives among the peasants,
and if he endeavoured to instil fear, he also had cause for fear.
Easily on a stormy night might the flames be kindled among his wooden
farm buildings, and no province was without its dismal stories of harsh
landlords or bailiffs who had been slain by unknown hands in field or
wood. However much we may admit the goodness or prudence of masters,
the position of the peasants still remains the darkest feature of the
past time. For we find everywhere in the scanty records of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an unhealthy antagonism of
classes. _And it was the larger portion of the German people which was
ruined by this oppression._[29]
Men even of uncommon strength and intelligence seldom succeeded in
extricating themselves from the proscribed boundaries by which their
life was fenced in. Ever greater became the chasm which separated them
from the smaller portion of the nation, who, by their perukes, bagwigs,
and pigtails, showed from afar that they belonged to a privileged
class. Up to the end of the seventeenth century these polished classes
seldom entertained a friendly feeling towards the peasant; on all sides
were to be heard complaints of his obduracy, dishonesty, and
coarseness. At no period was the suffering portion of the people so
harshly judged as in that, in which a spiritless orthodoxy embittered
the souls of those who had to preach the gospel of love. None were more
eager than the theologians in complaining of the worthlessness of
the country people, among whom they had to live; they always heard
hell-hounds howling round the huts of the villeins; their whole
conception of life was, indeed, dark, pedantic, and joyless. A
well-known little book, from the native district of Christopher von
Grimmelshausen, is especially characteristic. This book, entitled "Des
Bauerstands Lasterprob"--the exposure of the vices of the peasant
class[30]--never ceased to point out from the deeds of the villagers,
that the lives of the peasantry, from the village justice to the
goose-herd, were worthless and godless; that they were in the habit of
representing themselves as poor and miserable, and of complaining on
all occasions; that they were rude and overbearing to those whom they
did not fear; that they considered none as their friends, and
ungratefully deceived their benefactors. This book is much more
cruel than "The Lexicon of Deceit," by the hypochondriacal Coburger
Hoenn, which some centuries later analysed the impositions of all
classes,--and amongst others, those of the peasants,--alphabetically,
morosely, and with apt references.
To such defects, which are peculiar to the oppressed, others must,
indeed, be added, the consequences of the long war and its
demoralization. In the rooms of the village inns, about 1700, neither
candlesticks nor snuffers were to be seen, for everything had been
pilfered by the wayfarers; even the prayer-book had been stolen from
the host; a small looking-glass was a thing not to be thought of,
though 500 years earlier the village maiden, when she adorned herself
for the dance, took her little hand-glass with her as an ornament; and
if a householder lodged carriers, he was obliged to conceal all
portable goods, and to lock up all barns and hay-lofts. It was even
dangerous sometimes for a traveller to set foot in an inn. The desolate
room was filled, not only with tobacco-smoke, but also with the fumes
of powder; for it was a holiday amusement of the country people to play
with powder, and to molest unlucky strangers by throwing squibs or
small rockets before their feet or on their perukes; this was
accompanied by railery and abuse.[31] We are frequently disposed to
observe with astonishment, in these and similar complaints of
contemporaries, how the German nature maintained, amidst the deepest
degradation, a vital energy which, more than a hundred years after,
made the beginning of a better condition possible; and we may sometimes
doubt whether to admire the patience, or to lament the weakness, which
so long endured such misery; for, in spite of all that party zeal has
ever said in excuse of these servile relations, they were an endless
source of immorality both to the masters, their officials, and to the
people themselves. The sensuality of landed proprietors, and the
self-interest of magistrates and stewards, were exposed to daily
temptation at a period when a feeling of duty was weak in all classes.
More than once did the sluggish provincial governments exert themselves
to prevent bailiffs from compelling the peasant to feed cattle, sow
linseed, and spin for them; and foresters were in ill repute who
carried on traffic with the peasants, and winked at their proceedings
when the stems of the lordly wood were felled.[32] What was the feeling
of the country people against the landed proprietors, may be concluded
from the wicked proverb which became current about 1700, and fell from
the mouth of the rich Mansfeld peasant--"The young sparrows and young
nobles should have their heads broken betimes."[33]
Slowly did the dawn of a new day come to the German peasant. If we
would seek from whence arose the first rays of the new light, we shall
find them, together with the renovation of the people, in the studies
of the learned, who proclaimed the science, which was the most strange
and most incomprehensible to the country-people, then called
philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars
in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the
views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more
human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox
errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new
philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve,
and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the
peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his
calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and
his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a
manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once
been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth
century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor
countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he
rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the
straw of his roof, and the cocks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard
labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."[34]
On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic
State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the
greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of
keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such
material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be
perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also, was
influenced in its way by this awakening philanthropy. In 1704 it even
gave a grand privilege to the shepherds, wherein it declared them and
their lads honourable, and graciously advised the German nation to give
up the prejudice against this useful class of men, and no longer to
exclude their children from being artisans, on account of magic and
plying the knacker's trade. A few years afterwards it gave armorial
bearings; it also granted them the rights of a corporate body, with
seal, chest, and banner, on which a pious picture was painted.[35] More
stringent was the interference of the Hohenzollerns, who were
themselves, during four generations, the princely colonists of Eastern
Germany. Frederick II. made the most fundamental reforms in the
conquered provinces; many examples are cited of the blessings resulting
from them. When he took possession of Silesia, the village huts were
block-houses, formed from the stems of trees, and roofed with straw or
shingles, without brick chimneys; the baking ovens, joined on to the
houses, exposed them to the danger of fires; the husbandry was in a
pitiful plight; great commons and pastures covered with mole-hills and
thistles, small weak horses, and lean cows; and the landed proprietors
were for the most part harsh despots, against whom the clumsy Imperial
and magisterial administration could scarcely enforce any law. The King
carried on three severe wars in Silesia, during which his own soldiers,
the Austrians, and the Russians, consumed and ravaged the province.
Yet, only a few years after the Seven Years' War, 250 new villages and
2000 new cottages were erected, and frequently stone houses and tiled
roofs were to be seen. All the wooden chimneys and all the clay ovens
had been pulled down by the conqueror, and the people were compelled to
build anew; horses were brought from Prussia, and the sheep shorn once
in the year; peat cutters from Westphalia, and silkworm-breeders from
France, were introduced into the country. Oaks and mulberries were
planted, and premiums were given for the laying out of vineyards. At
his command the new potato was introduced; at the beginning of the
Seven Years' War, by the celebrated patent of the Minister of Justice,
von Carmer, commons and general pastures were abolished, and divided
among separate holders. With far-sighted forethought, a state of things
was introduced which has only recently been carried out. The
inheritance of property, also, was secured by law to the villeins. The
peasant obtained the right of complaint to the royal government, and
this right became for him a quick and vigorous law, for, however much
the King favoured the nobility when it was serviceable to the State,
yet he was constantly occupied, together with his officials, in
elevating the mass of tax-payers. The most insignificant might present
his petition, and the whole people knew, from numerous examples, that
the King read them. Many of this great Prince's attempts at
civilization did not succeed; but on all sides the pressure of a system
was felt which so assiduously raised the strength of the people, in
order to utilise them to the utmost in the State. Nowhere is the work
of this mighty ruler so thankfully acknowledged by contemporaries as by
the peasantry of the conquered province. When, on his numerous journeys
through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with
respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a
village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down
carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.
Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary classes. It is true
that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant,
material which could foster a creative spirit. When Goethe wrote
"Hermann and Dorothea," it was a new discovery for the nation that the
petty citizen was worthy of artistic notice; it was long, however,
before any one ventured lower among the people; but the honourable
philanthropists, the popular promulgators of enlightenment in the
burgher classes, preached and wrote with hearty zeal upon the singular,
uncouth, and yet numerous fellow-creature, the peasant, whose character
frequently only appeared to consist of an aggregate of unamiable
qualities, but who, nevertheless, was undeniably the indispensable
foundation of the other classes of human society.
One of the most influential writings of this kind was by Christian
Garve, "Upon the Character of the Peasants, Breslau, 1786," taken from
lectures given shortly before the outbreak of the French revolution.
The author was a clear-sighted, upright man, who was anxious for the
public weal, and was listened to with respect throughout the whole of
Germany, whenever he spoke upon social questions. His little book has a
thoroughly philanthropic tendency; the life of the peasant was
accurately known by him as it was by many others who were then occupied
with the improvement of the country people. The propositions which he
makes for the elevation of the class are sensible, but unsatisfactory;
as indeed are almost all theories with respect to social evils. Yet,
when we scan the contents of this well-meaning book, we are seized with
alarm; not at what he relates concerning the oppression of the peasant,
but at the way in which he himself seems necessitated to speak of
two-thirds of the German people. They are strangers to him and his
contemporaries: it is something new and attractive to their
philanthropy to realize the condition of these peculiar men. There is
an especial charm to a conscientious and feeling mind in ascertaining
clearly, what is the exact nature and cause of the stupidity,
coarseness, and evil qualities of the country people. The author even
compares their position with that of the Jews; he discusses their
condition of mind much in the same way that our philanthropists do
those of gaol prisoners; he sincerely wishes that the light of humanity
may fall on their huts; he compares their sloth and indolence with the
energetic working power which, as was even then known, the colonists
developed in the ancient woods of the new world. He gives this
well-meaning explanation of the contrast, that in our old and as it
were already becoming antiquated state, the many work for the one, and
a multitude of the industrious go without remuneration, therefore zeal
and desire are extinguished in a great portion of them. Almost all that
he says is true and right, but this calm kindliness, with which
enlightened men of the period of Immanuel Kant and the poetic court of
Weimar regarded the people, was unaccompanied by the slightest
suspicion, that the pith of the German national strength must be sought
in this despised and ruined class; that the condition of things under
which he himself, the author, lived, was hollow, barbarous, and
insecure; that the governments of his time possessed no guarantee of
stability, and that a political state--the great source of every manly
feeling, and of the noble consciousness of independence--was
impossible, even for the educated, so long as the peasant lived as a
beast of burden; and little did he think that all these convictions
would be forced upon the very next generation, after bitter sufferings
in a hard school, by the conquest of an external enemy. His work,
therefore, deserves well to be remembered by the present generation.
The following pages depict not only the condition of the peasantry, but
the literary class. Garve speaks as follows:--
"One circumstance has great influence on the character of the
peasantry: they hang much together. They live far more sociably one
with another than do the common burghers in the cities. They see each
other every day at their farm work; in the summer in the fields, in the
winter in the barns and spinning-rooms. They associate like soldiers,
and thus get an _esprit de corps_; many results arise from this: first,
they become polished after their fashion, and more acute through this
association. They are more fit for intercourse with their equals; and
they have better notions than the common artisan of many of the
relations of social life; that is to say, of all those which occur in
their class and in their own mode of life. This constant intercourse,
this continual companionship, is with them, as with soldiers, what
lightens their condition. It is a happy thing to hare much and constant
companionship with others, if they are your equals; it gives rise to an
intimate acquaintance and a reciprocal confidence, at least in outward
appearance, without which no intercourse can be agreeable. The noble
enjoys this advantage; he associates for the most part only with his
equals, being separated by his pride from those below him, and he and
his equals live much together, as leisure and wealth enable him to do
so. The peasant enjoys singular advantages from opposite reasons. His
insignificance is so great that it prevents his having the wish, still
more the opportunity, of associating with those above him; he hardly
ever sees anything but peasants, and his servitude and his work bring
him frequently in companionship with these his equals.
"But this very circumstance causes the peasants to act in a body; thus
the inconveniences of a democratic constitution are introduced, so that
a single unquiet head from their own body exercises great power over
them, and often influences the whole community. It is, moreover, the
reason why persons of another class have so little influence over them,
and can only sway them by authority and compulsion. They seldom see or
hear the judgments, conceptions, and examples of the higher orders, and
only for a brief space.
"I have long studied the special signification of the word _tueckisch_,
which I have never heard so frequently as when the talk has been of
peasants. It denotes, without doubt, a mixture of childish character,
of simplicity, and weakness, with spite and cunning.
"Every one, without doubt, remembers having seen faces of peasant boys,
in which one or both eyes leer out, as if by stealth, from under the
half-closed eyelids, with the mouth open and drawn into a jeering yet
somewhat vacant laugh, with the head bent down, as if they would
conceal themselves; in a word, faces which depict a mixture of fear,
shamefacedness, and simplicity, with derision and aversion. Such boys,
when one speaks to or requires anything of them, stand dumb and
motionless as a log; they answer no questions put to them by the
passersby, and their muscles seem stiff and immovable. But as soon as
the stranger is a little way off, they run to their comrades, and burst
out laughing.
"The low condition of the peasant, his servitude, and his poverty
produce in him a certain fear of the higher orders; his rearing and
mode of life make him on the one hand unyielding and insolent, and on
the other, in many respects, simple and ignorant; the frequent
antagonism of his own will and advantage, to the will and the commands
of those above him, implants in his mind the germs of animosity. Thus,
if the failings of his class are not counteracted by his personal
qualities, he becomes such as the boy described, especially in his
demeanour to his superiors. It is these superiors and lords of the
peasants who are to blame for his _tueckischen_ character. He will use
dissimulation in place of open resistance; he will be humble and
yielding, nay, even appear devoted in their presence; but when he
thinks he can act secretly, he will do everything against their will
and interest. He will think of tricks and intrigues, which,
nevertheless, are not so finely woven but that they may be easily seen
through.
"One may discover two main differences, both in the fate and the
character of the peasantry. He who is entirely under subjection, who
sighs under the yoke of a complete slavery, will, under usual
circumstances, submit to everything with apathy, without attempting the
least resistance, and even without a wish to lighten his own lot; he
will throw himself at the feet of any one who will tread on him. But if
he is roused from this torpor by special circumstances, by agitators,
by a cunning and bold leader, then he will become like a raging tiger,
and will lose at once, with the humility of the slave, all the feelings
of humanity.
"The half-serf who has property, and enjoys the protection of the laws,
but under more or less burdensome conditions, is bound to the glebe,
and at the same time to the service of the proprietor, to whose
jurisdiction he is amenable; this peasant does not usually bear his
burdens without wincing. There is no fear that he will endeavour to
throw them off his neck by open violence as a rebel; but he will carry
on a continual secret war with his master. To diminish his profit, and
to increase his own, is a wish that he has always at heart, and an
object which covertly, and as often as is practicable, he endeavours to
pursue. He practises crafty and small thefts on the property of his
master, and does not consider them so disgraceful as if he did the same
by his equal. He is not the entirely humble slave, nor yet the dreaded
enemy of his master, but he is not an obedient dependent, from free
will and a good heart; he is that which probably has been intended to
be expressed in some sort by the word _tueckisch_.
"One may add, as an ingredient or as a consequence of the
'_tueckischen_' nature, a certain amount of stubbornness which
distinguishes the peasant when his mind is agitated, or when a
prejudice is once rooted in him. His soul in this case appears to
become stiff, like his body and his limbs. He is then deaf to all
representations, however obvious they may be, or however capable he
might be, in an impartial state of mind, of seeing their justice. The
lawyers employed in the lawsuits of peasants will sometimes have known
such individuals, in whom it is doubtful whether the obstinacy with
which they cling to an obviously absurd idea, arises from their
blindness or from determined malice. Sometimes whole communities become
thus addle-headed. They then resemble certain crazy people, who, as it
is expressed, have a fixed idea, that is, a conception which their mind
takes up incessantly or returns to on the slightest occasion, and
which, however false it may be, can neither be removed by the evidence
of the senses nor by the representations of reason, because it is not
really in the mind, but has its foundation in the tenor of their
organization."
Thus speaks Christian Garve. His final counsel was: "Better village
schools." Some among the landed proprietors acted with a similar
philanthropic feeling. We would gladly say that their number was great;
but the frequent complaints to the contrary, and the zeal with which
benevolent commentators bring forward individual examples--like one
Rochow, of Rekahn, who established village schools at his own
cost--justify the conclusion that such benevolence would have been less
striking had it been more frequent. In fact it required individuals to
be very prudent in showing their good feeling for the peasants in
deeds, as it was often observed that they gave their service far more
willingly to strict nobles than to citizen proprietors; and that when
these, with a warmer feeling for the peasant, wished to show him
kindness, their goodwill sometimes met with a bad return. Thus a
citizen proprietor, taking possession of his property, gave each of his
peasants a present in money, and showed consideration for them in many
ways; the not unnatural consequence was, that they renounced all
service to him, and broke out into open resistance.
Whilst the German philanthropists were anxiously thinking and writing
for the countryman, a storm was already brewing on the other side of
the Rhine which in a few years was to destroy in Germany also, the
servitude of the peasants, together with the old form of government.
About 1790 the peasants began to occupy themselves eagerly with
politics. The schoolmaster read and explained the newspapers to them;
the hearers sat motionless, amidst thick tobacco smoke, all ears. In
Electoral Saxony some already made use of the new circulating library
in the neighbouring city.[36] In the Palatinate, and in the Upper
Rhine, the country people became disturbed, and refused service. In the
same year, in the richest part of Electoral Saxony, in the Lommatzscher
district, and on the property of the Graf von Schoenburg, a peasant
revolt once more broke out. Once more did the insurgents seize the
weapon of the slave, the wooden club with iron hoops. The peasants, by
a deputation, renounced all villein service to the landholders; they
sent to the neighbouring communities; from village to village hastened
the secret messengers; the magistrates, in the service of noblemen,
were expelled or beaten with sticks; the quiet parishes were threatened
with fire and sword; in every village saddled horses were standing to
send information to the neighbours of the march of the military. There
were the same secret conspiracy, the same outbreak, spreading with the
speed of lightning, the same union of measureless hate, with a natural
feeling of their rights, as in the peasant war of the sixteenth
century. Reciprocal agreements were laid before the landed proprietors,
which most of them subscribed amicably; and severe nobles were
threatened with the worst. Their demands quickly increased; soon they
required, not only exemption from tenths and soccage service, but also
the reimbursement of fines that had been paid. The peasants collected
in troops of more than a thousand men; they threatened the town of
Meissen, and attacked small detachments. But they never withstood
larger divisions of military. The most daring bands threw their caps
and clubs away, as soon as the cavalry were ordered to charge through
them. One of the chief leaders, a stubborn, daring old man of seventy
years of age, while still in chains, complained of the faintheartedness
of his bands. The movement was suppressed without much bloodshed. It
was characteristic of the time, that the landowners, from fear, did
everything in their power to bring about a mutual forgiveness and
forgetfulness, and that the condemned, during their penal labour, were
separated from other criminals and treated with leniency; they were
also excused the prison dress. From records of that period it may
clearly be seen how general was the feeling among the higher
magistrates, that the position of the peasant did not come up to the
requirements of the times.
Two years later, also, the German peasants in the Palatinate and in the
Electorate of Mainz danced round the red cap on the tree of freedom.
Incessantly did French influence overspread Germany. The State of the
Great Frederick was shattered; Germany became French up to the Elbe. In
the new French possessions, villeinage and servitude were abolished,
with a haste and recklessness which was intended to win the people to
the new dominion. The Princes of the Rhine Confederation followed this
example, with greater consideration for those whom they patronised; but
still under the strong influence of French ideas. In Prussia the
Governments and people saw, with alarm, how insecure was the
constitution of a State which employed so much the bodies and working
powers of the peasants, and took so little account of their souls. In
the year 1807 the great change in the relations of the country people
began in Prussia; the definition of the rights of the landowners and
peasants has lasted there, with many fluctuations and interruptions,
for half a century, and has not yet arrived at a full conclusion.
At this period the position of the countryman throughout Germany has so
improved, that no other progress of civilization can be compared to it.
The villein of the landowner has--with the exception of Mecklenburg,
where the condition of the middle ages still exists--become the free
citizen of his State; the law protects and punishes him and the
landowner alike; he sends representatives, not of his class only, but
of the nation, in union with the other classes of voters, to the
capital; he has legally ceased everywhere to be a separate order in the
State--in many provinces he has laid aside, with his present dress, his
old frowardness; he begins to dress himself _a la mode_, and--sometimes
in a clumsy, unpleasing form--to take his share in the inventions and
enjoyments of modern civilization. But, however great these changes may
be, they are not yet great enough generally, in Germany, to give the
countryman that position which, as a member of the State, a citizen,
and an agriculturist, he must attain, if the life of the people is to
give an impression in all respects of perfect soundness and power. His
interest in, and comprehension of, that highest earthly concern of
man--the State--is much too little developed; his craving for
instruction and cultivation, considered on the whole, is too small; and
in the larger portion of the Fatherland his soul is still encumbered by
some of the qualities which are nurtured by long oppression, hard
egotism, distrust of men differently moulded, litigiousness,
awkwardness, and a deficient understanding of his rights and position
as a citizen. The minds which have shaken off the old spell are still
in the form of transition which gives them a specially unfinished and
unpleasing aspect.
The agriculture of the German peasantry may still be considered as not
having, on the whole, reached that point which is necessary for an
energetic development of our national strength; nevertheless, we have
reason to rejoice in having made great progress in this direction.
Intellect is everywhere incessantly occupied in introducing to the
simple countryman new discoveries--machines, seeds, and a new method of
cultivation. In some favoured districts the agriculture of the small
farmer can scarcely be distinguished from the well-studied system of
the larger model farms. Nor has the German peasant, in the times of the
deepest depression, like the oppressed Slavonian, ever lost the
instinct of self-acquisition. For the very qualities which are his
characteristics, enduring systematic industry and strict parsimony, are
the groundwork of the highest earthly prosperity. There still subsists,
however, in wide districts, the old thraldom of the three-course system
with rights of common, and all the pressure which this system entails
on individuals. Even well-tested improvements are therefore difficult
to the countryman; because, with all his perseverance, he is yet
wanting in enterprising activity, and because the great scantiness of
his youthful instruction and technical education makes it difficult for
him to comprehend anything new. Thus the development of the German
peasant to greater inward freedom and capacity is steady, but slow. The
noble landed proprietor also, from entirely different reasons,
frequently neglects to raise the culture of the soil by energy,
technical knowledge, and the utmost exertion of his power; and, in like
manner, we find in other branches of production--in manufactures,
trade, commerce, and political life--a corresponding slowness of
progress. It places us still at a disadvantage in comparison with the
better-situated countries of Europe. For the position of Germany among
the States of Europe is such, that all other progress depends on the
development of its own agriculture, that is, on the degree of
intelligence and productive power which is perceptible in this primeval
manly occupation. We have no command of the sea; we have no colonies,
and no subjected countries, to which we can export the produce of our
industry. If this circumstance is perhaps a surety for our stability,
on the other hand it raises the vital importance which the German
countryman and the system of his agriculture exercise on the other
classes of the German people.
If therefore it is allowable to compare two very different phases of
human development, one may well say that the peasant of 1861 has not
yet gained, comparatively with the other classes of the people, the
independence and the conscious power which existed six centuries ago in
the provinces of Reithart von Reuenthal and Farmer Helmbrecht. And
whoever would teach us from the life of the past, how it has happened
that the strength of the nation has passed from the rural districts
into cities, and that the nobleman has raised himself so much above his
neighbour the peasant, must beware of asserting, that this depression
of the country-people is the natural consequence of the establishment
of a higher culture and more artistic forms of life by the side of the
simple agriculture of the lower class. He who follows his plough will
seldom be a member of a company which extend their speculations to the
distant corners of the earth; he will not read Homer in the original,
he will hardly read the work of a German philosopher upon logic, and
the easy intercourse of a modern _salon_ will scarcely be enlivened by
his wit. But the results of the collective culture, of that which the
learned find, which the artist forms, which manufacturers create, must,
at a period when the nation is vigorous and sound, when accessible to
the simple countryman of sound judgment, be comprehended and valued by
him.
Is it necessary that our neighbour the countryman should so seldom read
a good book, and still less often buy one? Is it necessary that he
should, as a rule, take in no other newspaper than the small sheet of
his own district? Is it necessary that it should be unknown to him, and
unfortunately sometimes also to his schoolmaster, how an angle is
determined, a parallelogram measured, and an ellipse drawn? Whoever
would now place a poem of Goethe's in the hand of a peasant woman,
would probably do a useless thing, and raise a dignified smile in a
"well-educated spectator." Must all that we possess of most beautiful
be incomprehensible to half our nation? Six hundred years ago, the poem
of Farmer Helmbrecht was understood in the village parlour, and the
charm of his sonorous verse, the poetry and the warm eloquence of his
language, were appreciated; and the rhythm and measure of those old
songs that accompanied the dances of the thirteenth century are just as
elegant and artistic as the finest verses now in the poems of the
greatest modern poets. There was a time when the German peasant had the
same lively susceptibility for noble poetry which we now assume as the
privilege of the highly educated. Is it necessary that the peasant of
the present day should be deficient in it? The Bohemian village
musician still plays with heartfelt delight the harmonious tones
produced by the genius of Haydn and Mozart; is it necessary that few
other musical sounds should be permitted to the German peasant than the
stale measures of spiritless dances? All this is not necessary;
something of the same barbarism benumbs our life which we perceive with
astonishment in the time of Christian Garve.
What, however, we consider at first as one of the still remaining
weaknesses of the peasants, is also the characteristic weakness of our
whole culture, which has become too artificial, because it has bloomed
in comparatively small and isolated circles of society, without the
regulation and ever-increasing invigoration which the collective
popular mind would have afforded it by cordial reciprocity and warm
sympathy. The peasant's having for so many centuries been a stranger to
social culture has, in the first place, made him weak, and also made
the culture of the other classes too unstable, over-refined, and
sometimes unmanly and impracticable.