sound almost like a prophecy. In his “Politics” (i. 4) he uses this language: “Every servant is an instrument more valuable than any other instrument. For if every instrument at command, or from foreknowledge of its master’s will, could accomplish its special work—if the shuttle thus should weave and the lyre play of itself—then neither would the architect want servants nor the master require slaves.” These remarks seem to contain a dim foreboding of the marvellous invention of machinery which has taken place in this age, and has substituted iron and steel for bone and muscle. A feudal aristocracy was once required to protect and guide industry and agriculture. The growth of the _bourgeoisie_ in the cities finally rendered feudalism an antiquated institution, and it had to make way for the third estate, under whose guidance wealth has increased most marvellously and laborers have been gathered together and organized. But the _bourgeoisie_ has fulfilled its mission. It is now but a hinderance and an obstacle. The repeated crises and the continual concentration of property in the hands of a few mammoth millionaires prove conclusively that they are not equal to the task of leadership. The time has arrived when the _proletariat_, the fourth estate, must take the reins into its own hands. It is now to play the grand _rôle_ in the history of the world. “With the continually decreasing number of the magnates of capitalism, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of the changed form of production, there is an accompanying increase in the mass of misery, of oppression, of bondage, of degradation, of exploitation; but there also arises a revolt of an increasing class of laborers, who have been schooled, united, and disciplined by the mechanism of the capitalistic processes of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a shackle to the method of production, under and with which it has grown up. The concentration of the means of production and the association of laborers reach a point where they are incompatible with their capitalistic shell. The shell is broken. The death-knell of capitalistic private property sounds. The expropriateurs are expropriated.”[175] Thus dawns a new and better era in the history of human development.