So far as negation and destruction were concerned, they were working apparently for the new order of things--that new order of things which _longo intervallo_ has finally landed us in the developed capitalistic Individualism of the twentieth century.

Yet when we come to consider their constructive programmes we find the positive demands put forward are based either on ideal conceptions derived from reminiscences of primitive communism, or else that they distinctly postulate a return to a state of things--the old mark-organisation--upon which the later feudalism had in various ways encroached, and finally superseded.

Hence they were, in these respects, not merely not in the trend of contemporary progress, but in actual opposition to it; and therefore, as Lassalle has justly remarked, they were necessarily and in any case doomed to failure in the long run.
This point should not be lost sight of in considering the various popular movements of the earlier half of the sixteenth century.

The world was still essentially mediaeval; men were still dominated by mediaeval ways of looking at things and still immersed in mediaeval conditions of life.

It is true that out of this mediaeval soil the new individualistic society was beginning to grow, but its manifestations were as yet not so universally apparent as to force a recognition of their real meaning.