Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/191

 inferiority of the group comes into being the feudalism of the Middle Ages arose. So long as the full citizen—either Greek, Roman or Teutonic—knew no subordination under an individual, there existed for him on the one hand complete equality with those of his own order, but on the other hand rigid exclusiveness toward those of lower orders. Feudalism remodeled this characteristic social form into the equally characteristic arrangement which filled the gap between freedom and bondage with a scale of classes. Service, servitium, united all members of the realm with each other and with the king. In those times of primitive economy the king had no other resort for rewarding his officials and for binding the great men of his dominions to himself than by enfeoffing them with land and laborers. At first this bestowal was only for life tenure or at will, but the fief later passed into property. The king parted with some of his domain, and his greater subjects likewise assigned land as fiefs to their inferior vassals and thus a gradation of social position, possessions and obligations came into existence. But the same progress came about from the opposite direction. The intermediate strata came into being not alone through concessions from above, but also through accumulations from below. On the one hand small landowners, originally free, gave up their land to more powerful lords, to receive it back from them as a fief. These lords of domains on the other hand, through constant accretions of power, which weakened royalty could not prevent, rose in their turn to kingly power. It is consistent with this contemporaneous duality of genesis that the feudal form of society may have quite antithetical consequences for its monarchical head. While the outcome in Germany was that the central power became hollow, being changed into a mere form, the