But from these identical discontented ones comes a reasoning somewhat as follows: It need not make any difference to the "good citizens" who protects them and their principles, whether an absolute king or a constitutional one, a republic, etc., if only they are protected. And what is their principle, whose protector they always "love"? Not that of labor; not that of birth either. But that of _mediocrity_, of the golden mean: a little birth and a little labor, _i. e._, an _interest-bearing possession_. Possession is here the fixed, the given, inherited (birth); interest-drawing is the exertion about it (labor); _laboring capital_, therefore. Only no immoderation, no ultra, no radicalism! Right of birth certainly, but only hereditary possessions; labor certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labor of capital and of the--subject laborers. If an age is imbued with an error, some always derive advantage from the error, while the rest have to suffer from it. In the Middle Ages the error was general among Christians that the church must have all power, or the supreme lordship on earth; the hierarchs believed in this "truth" not less than the laymen, and both were spellbound in the like error. But by it the hierarchs had the _advantage_ of power, the laymen had to _suffer_ subjection. However, as the saying goes, "one learns wisdom by suffering"; and so the laymen at last learned wisdom and no longer believed in the mediæval "truth."--A like relation exists between the commonalty and the laboring class. Commoner and laborer believe in the "truth" of _money_; they who do not possess it believe in it no less than those who possess it: the laymen, therefore, as well as the priests. "Money governs the world" is the keynote of the civic epoch. A destitute aristocrat and a destitute laborer, as "starvelings," amount to nothing so far as political consideration is concerned; birth and labor do not do it, but _money_ brings _consideration_.[78] The possessors rule, but the State trains up from the destitute its "servants," to whom, in proportion as they are to rule (govern) in its name, it gives money (a salary). I receive everything from the State. Have I anything without the _State's assent_? What I have without this it _takes_ from me as soon as it discovers the lack of a "legal title." Do I not, therefore, have everything through its grace, its assent? On this alone, on the _legal title_, the commonalty rests. The commoner is what he is through the _protection of the State_, through the State's grace. He would necessarily be afraid of losing everything if the State's power were broken. But how is it with him who has nothing to lose, how with the proletarian? As he has nothing to lose, he does not need the protection of the State for his "nothing." He may gain, on the contrary, if that protection of the State is withdrawn from the _protégé_.