The outcome here spoken of means the further development of the primitive feudal state, a matter of importance to our understanding of universal history as a _process_. The principal lines of development into which this issue branches off are twofold and of fundamentally different character. _But this polar opposition is conditioned by a like contrast between two sorts of economic wealth each of which increases in accordance with the “law of agglomeration about existing nuclei.”_ In the one case, it is movable property; in the other, landed property. Here it is the capital of commerce, there property in land, accumulating in the hands of a smaller and smaller number, and thereby overturning radically the articulation of classes, and with it the whole State. The maritime State is the scene of the development of movable wealth; the territorial State is the embodiment of the development of landed property. The final issue of the first is _capitalistic exploitation_ by slavery, the outcome of the latter is, first of all, the _developed feudal State_. Capitalistic exploitation by slavery, the typical result of the development of the so-called “antique States” on the Mediterranean, does not end in the death of states, which is of no importance, but in the death of peoples, because of the consumption of population. In the pedigree of the historical development of the State, it forms a side branch, from which no further immediate growth can take place. The developed feudal State, however, represents the principal branch, the continuation of the trunk; and is therefore the origin for the further growth of the State. Thence it has developed into the State governed by feudal systems; into absolutism; into the modern constitutional State; and if we are right in our prognosis, it will become a “free citizenship.” So long as the trunk grew only in one direction, i. e., to include the primitive feudal State of higher grade, our sketch of its growth and development could and did comprise both forms. Henceforth, after the bifurcation, our story branches and follows each branch to its last twig. We begin, then, with the maritime states, although they are not the older form. On the contrary, as far back as the dawn of history clears the fog of prehistoric existence, the first strong states were formed as territorial states, which then, by their own powers, attained the scale of developed feudal States. But beyond this stage, at least as regards those States most interesting to our culture, most of them either remained stationary or fell into the power of maritime states; and then, infected with the deadly poison of capitalistic exploitation through slavery, were destroyed by the same plague.