When, later, the division of labor increases, all the differences of men's aptitudes are turned to more advantage, and are more fully developed. In the same proportion that a working class is developed, the members of which are nothing but workmen, and can scarcely hope to possess capital or land,[201-4] there grows up, side by side with it, a class of mere capitalists, who come to obtain an ever-increasing importance. Considered from a purely economic point of view, this transition has its great advantages. How much must the existence of a special class of capitalists facilitate the concentration of capital and the consequent promotion of production, as well as its (capital's) price-leveling influx and outflow! Even "idle" capitalists have this of good, that, without them, no competent man, destitute of means could engage in any independent enterprise. When, indeed, the gulf between these two classes passes certain bounds, it may, politically and socially, become a great evil. (§ 63.)[201-5] [Footnote 201-1: Among nations in their decline, rent and interest fall into one possession again, because capitalists here are wont to buy the land. (_Roscher_, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, § 140 ff.)] [Footnote 201-2: Related to this peculiarity of the middle ages is the fact that the canon law looked with disfavor on the personal separation of the three factors of production. So also in the prohibition of the _Weddeschat_ referred to § 161, instead of rent-purchase (_Rentekauf_), also by extending the idea of partnership to a number of transactions which are only forms of loan. (_Endemann_ in _Hildebrand's_ Jahrb., 1863, 176 ff.) Antiquity also, with the independence of its οἶκος, with its slavery, etc., had not developed the difference between the three branches of industry to any extent. _Rodbertus_, in _Hildebrand's_ Jahrbb., 1865, I, 343.] [Footnote 201-3: If older writers, like _Steuart_, etc., speak so little of capital, labor and rent, and so much of city and country, it is not on account of ignorance simply. The contrast between the latter was then much more important than to-day, and that between the former much less developed. When, indeed, _Colton_, Public Economy of the United States, 1848, 155 ff., claims that because in America the three branches of income do not exist in so separated a condition as in Europe, therefore European Political Economy and its theories are not applicable to America, he forgets that science should not be simply a description or impression made of the reality, but an analysis of it.]