Let us begin, then, by taking stock of the main points which differentiate medieval village life from that of today. We shall not need to reflect whether those older conditions were natural; for we shall see that, however strange to modern practice, they grew up quite naturally from the different circumstances of those times. We shall, however, ask ourselves more often whether these processes, however natural, were actually inevitable; and here, I think, we shall generally decide that they may have been avoidable in the abstract, but that we ourselves, under the same pressure of circumstances, could hardly count upon ourselves (or on our fellow-citizens as we know them), to follow any wiser and more far-seeing course than our ancestors followed. But, while acquitting the men themselves, we must weigh their institutions most critically; since easy-going indulgence to the past may spell injustice to the present and the future. We are anxious, and rightly anxious, about our wage-earning classes both in the towns and on the land; I suppose there are few who would not vote for socialism tomorrow if they could believe that socialism would not only diminish the wealth of the few but also permanently enrich the poor. We are deeply concerned with these questions; and there are some who preach a return to medieval conditions; not, of course, a direct return, but a new orientation of society which they hope would restore the medieval relation of class to class, and thus (as they believe) bring us back to a state of patriarchal prosperity and content.