Mutual Aid: A Factor of EvolutionKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Science
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Cooperation; Social groups; Social institutions
cathedral in order to express the new, wider, and broader union which
had been called into life.
The means at hand for these grand undertakings were disproportionately
small. Cologne Cathedral was begun with a yearly outlay of but 500
marks; a gift of 100 marks was inscribed as a grand donation;(31) and
even when the work approached completion, and gifts poured in in
proportion, the yearly outlay in money stood at about 5,000 marks, and
never exceeded 14,000. The cathedral of Basel was built with equally
small means. But each corporation contributed its part of stone, work,
and decorative genius to their common monument. Each guild expressed in
it its political conceptions, telling in stone or in bronze the history
of the city, glorifying the principles of "Liberty, equality, and
fraternity,"(32) praising the city's allies, and sending to eternal fire
its enemies. And each guild bestowed its love upon the communal monument
by richly decorating it with stained windows, paintings, "gates, worthy
to be the gates of Paradise," as Michel Angelo said, or stone
decorations of each minutest corner of the building.(33) Small cities,
even small parishes,(34) vied with the big agglomerations in this work,
and the cathedrals of Laon and St. Ouen hardly stand behind that of
Rheims, or the Communal House of Bremen, or the folkmote's bell-tower of
Breslau. "No works must be begun by the commune but such as are
conceived in response to the grand heart of the commune, composed of the
hearts of all citizens, united in one common will"--such were the words
of the Council of Florence; and this spirit appears in all communal
works of common utility, such as the canals, terraces, vineyards, and
fruit gardens around Florence, or the irrigation canals which
intersected the plains of Lombardy, or the port and aqueduct of Genoa,
or, in fact, any works of the kind which were achieved by almost every
city.(35)
All arts had progressed in the same way in the medieval cities, those of
our own days mostly being but a continuation of what had grown at that
time. The prosperity of the Flemish cities was based upon the fine
woollen cloth they fabricated. Florence, at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, before the black death, fabricated from 70,000 to
100,000 panni of woollen stuffs, which were valued at 1,200,000 golden
florins.(36) The chiselling of precious metals, the art of casting, the
fine forging of iron, were creations of the mediaeval "mysteries" which
had succeeded in attaining in their own domains all that could be made
by the hand, without the use of a powerful prime motor. By the hand and
by invention, because, to use Whewell's words:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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