The provision trades in particular do not appear to have ceased to be regulated and organized. If, as Fustel de Coulanges says, "history is the science of becoming," it must here acknowledge that guilds already existed potentially in society. It may even be added that in certain cases, it was to the interest of count or bishop to encourage their formation; for, as he demanded compulsory payment in kind or in money, it was to his advantage to have a responsible collective body to deal with. It is certain, too, that religious society, with its labouring or weaving monks (the Benedictines or Umiliate for instance), with its bodies of bridge-building brothers, with its lay brotherhoods, was also tending to encourage the spirit of association. But it is none the less true that these organisms,--if not exactly formless, at any rate incomplete, unstable, with little cohesion, and created with non-commercial aims,--could not, without the influence of favourable surroundings, have transformed themselves into guilds possessing statutes, magistrates, political jurisdiction, and often political rights. It was necessary that they should find, in Europe, social conditions in which the need for union, felt by the mass of the population, could act on their weakness and decadence like an invigorating wind, infusing new life into them. It was necessary that they should find in the town[4] which sheltered them, a little independent centre, which would permit the seeds of the future, which they held, to grow and bear fruit unchecked. It may then be concluded that there was, if not a definite persistence of that which had already existed, at least a survival out of the wreckage, or a development of germs, which, thanks to the surrounding conditions, underwent a complete metamorphosis. 2. What we have just said explains both how it was that the guilds were not confined to any small region, and why they were not of equal importance in all the countries in which they were established. They are to be met with in the whole of the Christian West, in Italy as well as in France, in Germany as well as in England. They were introduced simultaneously with town life in the countries of the north. There is sufficient authority for believing that the system which they represent predominated in those days in the three worlds which disputed the coasts and the supremacy of the Mediterranean--the Roman Catholic, the Byzantine, and the Mohammedan. Thus there reigned in the basin of that great inland sea a sort of unity of economic organization. This unity, however, did not exclude variety. The guilds were more alive and more powerful as the towns were more free. Consequently it was in Flanders, in Italy, in the "Imperial Towns," in the trading ports, wherever, in fact, the central authority was weak or distant, that they received the strongest impetus.