And in conclusion, if they could develop and universally introduce the mild form of servitude which they had been practicing at home, and which more and more displaced slavery also in the Roman empire—to whom was it due, unless it was again their barbarism, thanks to which they had not yet arrived at complete slavery, neither in the form of the ancient labor slaves, nor in that of the oriental house slaves?
This milder form of servitude, as Fourier first stated, gave to the oppressed the means of their gradual emancipation as a class (fournit aux cultivateurs des moyens d'affranchissement collectif et progressif) and is therefore far superior to slavery, which permits only the immediate enfranchisement of the individual without any transitory stage. Antiquity did not know any abolition of slavery by rebellion, but the serfs of the middle ages gradually enforced their liberation as a class.
Every vital and productive germ with which the Germans inoculated the Roman world, was due to barbarism. Indeed, only barbarians are capable of rejuvenating a world laboring under the death throes of unnerved civilization. And the higher stage of barbarism, to which and in which the Germans worked their way up previous to the migrations, was best calculated to prepare them for this work. That explains everything.