Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of medieval life.  In fact, we know of guilds among all possible professions:  guilds of serfs,(33) guilds of freemen, and guilds of both serfs and freemen; guilds called into life for the special purpose of hunting, fishing, or a trading expedition, and dissolved when the special purpose had been achieved; and guilds lasting for centuries in a given craft or trade.  And, in proportion as life took an always greater variety of pursuits, the variety in the guilds grew in proportion.  So we see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the “mystery” of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation—­even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organized on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support.(34) For Russia we have positive evidence showing that the very “making of Russia” was as much the work of its hunters’, fishermen’s, and traders’ artels as of the budding village communities, and up to the present day the country is covered with artels.(35)

These few remarks show how incorrect was the view taken by some early explorers of the guilds when they wanted to see the essence of the institution in its yearly festival.  In reality, the day of the common meal was always the day, or the morrow of the day, of election of aldermen, of discussion of alterations in the statutes, and very often the day of judgment of quarrels that had risen among the brethren,(36) or of renewed allegiance to the guild.  The common meal, like the festival at the old tribal folkmote—­the mahl or malum—­or the Buryate aba, or the parish feast and the harvest supper, was simply an affirmation of brotherhood.  It symbolized the times when everything was kept in common by the clan.  This day, at least, all belonged to all; all sate at the same table and partook of the same meal.  Even at a much later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat this day by the side of the rich alderman.  As to the distinction which several explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon “frith guild” and the so-called “social” or “religious” guilds—­all were frith guilds in the sense above mentioned,(37) and all were religious in the sense in which a village community or a city placed under the protection of a special saint is social and religious.  If the institution of the guild has taken such an immense extension in Asia, Africa, and Europe, if it has lived thousands of years, reappearing again and again when similar conditions called it into existence, it is because it was much more than an eating association, or an association for going to church on a certain day, or a burial club.  It answered to a deeply inrooted want of human nature; and it embodied all