I said further with reference to the nobility of the Middle Ages, that they held in contempt all activity and industry of the commoners. The situation is the same today. All kinds of work, to be sure, are equally esteemed today, and if anybody became a millionaire by rag-picking he would be sure of obtaining a highly esteemed position in society.

But what social contempt falls upon those who, no matter at what they labor or how hard they toil, have no capital to back them—that is a matter which you, Gentlemen, do not need to be told by me, but can find often enough, unfortunately, in your daily life. Indeed, in many respects, the capitalist class asserts the supremacy of its special privilege with even stricter consistency than the nobility of the Middle Ages did with its land ownership. The instruction of the people—I mean here of the adult people—was in the Middle Ages the work of the clergy. Since then the newspapers have assumed this function; but through the securities a newspaper must give, and still more through the stamp tax which is laid in our country, as in France and elsewhere, on newspapers, a daily newspaper has become a very expensive institution, which cannot be established without very considerable capital, with the result that, for this very reason, even the opportunity to mold public opinion, instruct it, and guide it has become the privilege of the capitalist class.

Were this not the case, you would have much different and very much better papers. It is interesting to see how early this attempt of the bourgeoisie to make the press a privilege of capital appears, and in what frank and undisguised form. On July 24, 1789, a few days after the capture of the Bastille, during the first days after the middle class obtained political supremacy, the representatives of the city of Paris passed a resolution by which they declared printers responsible if they published pamphlets or sheets by writers sans existence connue (without visible means of support). The newly won freedom of the press, then, was to exist only for writers who had visible means of support. Property thus appears as the condition of the freedom of the press, indeed of the morality of the writer. The straightforwardness of the first days of citizen sovereignty only expresses in a childishly frank manner what is today artfully obtained by bonding and stamp taxes. With these main characteristic facts corresponding to our consideration of the Middle Ages we shall have to be satisfied here.

What we have seen so far are two historical periods, each of which stands for the controlling idea of a distinct class, which impresses its own principle upon all institutions of the time.

First, the idea of the nobility, or land ownership, which forms the controlling principle of the Middle Ages, and permeates all the institutions of that time.

This period closed with the French Revolution; though, of course, especially in Germany, where this revolution came about, not through the people, but in much slower and more complete reforms introduced by the governments, numerous and important survivals of that first historical period still exist, preventing to a large extent, even today, complete control by the capitalist class.

We observed, second, the period beginning with the French Revolution at the end of the last century, which has capitalism as its principle and establishes this as the privilege which permeates all social institutions and determines participation in the public policy. This period is also, little as external appearances indicate, essentially at an end.

On February 24, 1848, the first dawn of a new historical period became visible, for on that day in France—that land in whose mighty internal struggles the victories as well as the defeats of liberty indicate victories and defeats for all mankind—a revolution broke out which placed a workingman at the head of the provisional government, which declared the principle of the State to be the improvement of the lot of the working classes, and proclaimed the universal and direct franchise, through which every citizen who had attained his twenty-first year, without regard to property, should receive an equal share in the control of the State and the determination of public policy. You see, Gentlemen, if the Revolution of 1789 was the revolution of the tiers etat (the third class), this time it is the fourth class—which in 1789 was still undistinguished from the third class and seemed to coincide with it—that now attempts to establish its own principle as the controlling one of society and to make it pervade all institutions.

But here, in the case of the supremacy of the fourth class, we find the tremendous distinction that this class is the final and all-inclusive disinherited class of humanity, which can set up no further exclusive condition, either of legal or actual kind, neither nobility, land ownership, nor capital, which it might establish as a new privilege and carry through the institutions of society. Workingmen we all are, so far as we have the desire to make ourselves useful to human society in any way whatsoever.

This fourth class, in whose bosom therefore no possible germ of a new order of privilege is concealed, is for that very reason synonymous with the whole human race. Its class is, in truth, the class of all humanity, its liberty is the liberty of humanity itself, its sovereignty is the sovereignty of all. Whoever hails the principle of the working class, in the sense in which I have developed it, as a controlling principle of society, utters no cry which separates and makes hostile to another the classes of society. He utters, rather, a cry of reconciliation, a cry which includes all society, a cry for the leveling of all hostilities among the social strata, a cry of accord, in which all should join who do not wish privilege and the oppression of the people by privileged classes, a cry of love, which, ever since it spoke for the first time from the heart of the people, will always remain the true voice of the people, and, on account of its meaning, will still be a cry of love, even if it sounds the battle-cry of the people.

The principle of the working class as a controlling principle of society we have still to consider from three points of view—first, as to the formal means of its realization; second, as to its moral significance; third, as to its political conception of public policy.

The formal means for carrying out this principle is the universal and direct franchise already discussed—I say the universal and direct franchise, not merely the general franchise such as we had in 1848. The introduction in elections of two steps—of voters and of electors—is nothing but an artful means introduced purposely with the intention of thwarting, so far as possible, the will of the people in the elections. To be sure, the universal and direct franchise will be no magic wand, Gentlemen, which can protect you from temporary mistakes. We have seen in France, in the years 1848 and 1849, two unfavorable elections in succession, but the universal and direct franchise is the only means which automatically corrects, in course of time, the mistakes and temporary wrong to which this may lead. It is that legendary lance which itself heals the wounds it makes. In the course of time it is impossible, with universal and direct franchise, for chosen representatives not to be a completely faithful reflection of the people who have elected them. The people, therefore, at every time will consider universal and direct franchise as an indispensable political weapon, and as the most fundamental and important of their demands.

Let us now glance at the moral bearing of this social principle which we are considering.

Perhaps the idea of the lowest classes of society as the controlling principle of society and of the State may appear very dangerous and immoral, one which threatens to expose morality and culture to the danger of being overrun by a "modern barbarism."

And it would be no wonder if this thought should appear so at present. For even public opinion—I have already indicated by what means, namely, through the newspapers—receives today its imprint from the coining-die of capital and from the hands of the privileged capitalist class.

Nevertheless this fear is only a prejudice; and it can be proved, on the contrary, that this thought would represent the highest moral progress and triumph which the world's history has shown. That view is a prejudice, I say, and it is the prejudice of the present time, which is still controlled by privilege.

At another time—at the time of the first French Republic of 1793, which was necessarily forced to fail from its own lack of clearness—the opposite prejudice prevailed. At that time it was held as a dogma that all the upper classes were immoral and only the common people were good and moral. This view is due to Rousseau. In the new Declaration of Human Rights which the French Convention, that powerful constitutional assembly, published, it is even set forth in a special article—Article 19—which reads "Toute institution, qui ne suppose le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse." (Every institution which does not assume that the people is good and the magistracy corruptible is faulty.) You see that is exactly the opposite of the confidence which is called for today, according to which there is no greater crime than to doubt the good-will and the virtue of the magistrates, while the people are considered on principle a sort of dangerous beast and centre of corruption.

At that time the opposite dogma even went so far that almost anybody whose coat was in good repair appeared for that very reason corrupt and suspicious, and virtue and purity and patriotic morality were believed to be found only in those who had no good coat. It was the period of sans-culottism.

This point of view had really a foundation of truth, which, however, appears in a false and perverted form. Now there is nothing more dangerous than a principle which appears in false and perverted form; for, whatever attitude you take toward it, you are sure to fare badly. If you adopt this truth in its false, perverted form, then, at certain times, this will produce the most terrible devastation, as was the case in the period of sans-culottism. If, on account of the false form, you reject the whole proposition as false, you fare still worse, for you have rejected a truth, and, in the case which we are considering, a truth without whose recognition no wholesome progress is possible in modern political affairs.

There is therefore no other procedure possible than to overcome the false and perverted form of that proposition, and to try to establish clearly its true meaning.

Current public opinion is, as I said, disposed to stamp the whole proposition as entirely false and as a declamation of the French Revolution and of Rousseau. However, if this unreceptive attitude toward Rousseau and the French Revolution were still possible, it would be entirely impossible with reference to one of the greatest German philosophers (Fichte), the one hundredth anniversary of whose birth this State will celebrate next month, one of the most powerful thinkers of all nations and all times.

Fichte also declares expressly and literally that, with the rising social scale, a constantly increasing moral deterioration is found, and that "inferiority of character increases in proportion to the higher social class."

The final reason of these propositions Fichte has nevertheless not developed. He gives as the reason of this corruption the selfishness of the upper classes; but then the question must immediately arise whether selfishness is not also to be found in the lower classes, or why less in these classes. Now it must immediately appear as a strong contradiction that less selfishness should prevail in the lower classes than in the upper, who have in large measure the advantage of them in the well-recognized moral elements, culture and education.

The real reason, and the explanation of this contradiction, which appears at first so strong, is the following:

For a long time, as we have seen, the development of nations, the tendency of history, has been toward a constantly extending abolition of the privileges which guarantee to the higher classes their position as higher and ruling classes. The wish for perpetuation of these, or personal interest, brings therefore every member of the upper classes who has not once for all, by a wide outlook upon his whole personal existence, raised himself above such considerations (and you will understand, Gentlemen, that these can form only very unusual exceptions) into a position which is from principle hostile to the progress of the people, to the extension of education and science, to the advance of culture, to all tendencies and victories of historical life.

This opposition of the personal interest of the upper classes to the progress of culture in the nation produces the great and inevitable immorality of the upper classes. It is a life whose daily requirements you only need picture to yourselves in order to feel the deep decline of character to which it must lead. To be obliged daily to take an attitude of opposition to everything great and good, to bewail its success, to rejoice at its failures, to check its further progress, to make futile or to curse the progress which has already been made, is like a continual existence in the enemy's country; and this enemy is the moral fellowship of the whole country in which you live, for which all true morality urges support. It is a continual existence, I say, in an enemy's country. This enemy is your own people, who must be looked upon and treated as an enemy, and this hostility must, at least in the long run, be craftily concealed and more or less artfully veiled.

From this arises the necessity either of doing what is against the voice of your own conscience, or of stifling this voice from the force of custom in order not to be annoyed by it, or, finally, of never knowing this voice, never knowing anything better or having anything better than the religion of your own advantage.

This life, Gentlemen, therefore leads necessarily to a complete lack of appreciation and a contempt for all ideal efforts, to a pitying smile when the great word "ideal" is even mentioned; to a deep lack of appreciation and of sympathy for everything beautiful and great; to a complete transformation of all moral elements in us into the one passion of selfish opportunism and the pursuit of pleasure.

This conflict between personal interest and the cultural development of the nation is, fortunately, not to be found in the lower classes of society.

In the lower classes, to be sure, there is, unfortunately, selfishness enough, much more than there should be; but this selfishness, if it exists, is the fault of individuals and not the inevitable fault of the class.

Even a very slight instinct tells the members of the lower classes that, so far as each one of them depends merely upon himself and merely thinks of himself, he can hope for no considerable improvement of his situation; but so far as the lower classes of society aim at the improvement of their condition as a class, so far does this personal interest, instead of opposing the course of history and therefore of being condemned to the aforesaid immorality, coincide in its tendency completely with the development of the people as a whole, with the victory of the ideal, with the progress of culture, with the vital principle of history itself—which is nothing else than the development of liberty. Or, as we have already seen, their cause is the cause of all humanity.

You are therefore in the fortunate position, Gentlemen, instead of being compelled to be dead to the idea, of being destined rather, through your own personal interests, to a greater receptiveness for it. You are in the fortunate position that that which forms your own true personal interest coincides with the throbbing heart-beat of history—with the active, vital principle of moral development. You can therefore devote yourself to historical development with personal passion and be sure that the more fervent and consuming this passion is, the more moral is your position, in the true sense which I have explained to you.

These are the reasons why the control of the fourth class over the State must produce a fullness of morality and culture and knowledge such as never yet existed in history.

But still another reason points in the same direction, which again is most intimately connected with all the considerations which we have stated and forms their keystone.

The fourth class has not only a different formal political principle from the capitalist class—namely, the universal direct franchise in place of the property qualification of the capitalist class; it has, further, not only through its social position a different relation to moral forces than the upper classes, but also, and partly in consequence of this, a conception of the moral purpose of the State entirely different from that of the capitalist class. The moral idea of the capitalist is this—that nothing whatsoever is to be guaranteed to any individual but the unimpeded exercise of his faculties.

If we were all equally strong, equally wise, equally educated, and equally rich, this idea might be regarded as a sufficient and a moral one; but since we are not so, and cannot be so, this thought is not sufficient, and therefore, in its consequences, leads necessarily to a serious immorality; for its result is that the stronger, abler, richer man exploits the weaker and becomes his master.

The moral idea of the working class, on the other hand, is that the unimpeded and free exercise of individual faculties by the individual is not sufficient, but that in a morally adjusted community there must be added to it solidarity of interests, mutual consideration, and mutual helpfulness in development.

In contrast to such a condition the capitalist class has this conception of the moral purposes of the State—that it consists exclusively and entirely in protecting the personal liberty of the individual and his property.

This is a policeman's idea, Gentlemen—a policeman's idea because the State can think of itself only in the guise of a policeman whose whole office consists in preventing robbery and burglary. Unfortunately this conception is to be found, in consequence of imperfect thinking, not only among acknowledged liberals, but, often enough, even among many supposed to be democrats. If the capitalist class were to carry their thought to its logical extreme they would have to admit that, according to their idea, if there were no thieves or robbers the State would be entirely unnecessary.

The fourth class conceives of the purpose of the State in a quite different manner, and its conception of it is the true one.

History is a struggle with nature—that is, with misery, with ignorance, with poverty, with weakness, and, accordingly, with restrictions of all kinds to which we were subject when the human race appeared in the beginning of history. A constantly advancing victory over this weakness—that is the development of liberty which history portrays.

In this struggle we should never have taken a step forward, nor should we ever take another, if we had carried it on, or tried to carry it on, as individuals, each for himself alone.

It is the State which has the office of perfecting this development of freedom, and of the human race to freedom. The State is this unity of individuals in a moral composite—a unity which increases a millionfold the powers of all individuals who are included in this union, which multiplies a millionfold the powers which are at the command of them all as individuals.

The purpose of the State, then, is not to protect merely the personal liberty of the individual and the property which, according to the idea of the capitalist, he must have before he can participate in the State; the purpose of the State is, rather, through this union to put individuals in a position to attain objects, to reach a condition of existence which they could never reach as individuals, to empower them to attain a standard of education, power, and liberty which would be utterly impossible for them, one and all, merely as individuals. The object of the State is, accordingly, to bring the human being to positive and progressive development—in a word, to shape human destiny, i.e., the culture of which mankind is capable, into actual existence. It is the training and development of the human race for freedom.

Such is the real moral nature of the State—its true and higher task. This is so truly the case that for all time it has been carried out through the force of circumstances, by the State, even without its will, even without its knowledge, even against the will of its leaders.

But the working class, the lower classes of society in general, have, on account of the helpless position in which their members find themselves as individuals, the sure instinct that just this must be the function of the State—the aiding of the individual, by the union of all, to such a development as would be unobtainable by him merely as an individual.

The State then, brought under the control of the idea of the working class, would no longer be driven on, as all states have been up to this time, unconsciously and often reluctantly, by the nature of things and the force of circumstances; but it would make this moral nature of the State its task, with the greatest clearness and complete consciousness. It would accomplish with ready willingness and the most complete consistency that which, up to this time, has been forced only in the dimmest outlines from the opposing will, and just for this reason it would necessarily promote a nourishing of intellect, a development of happiness, education, prosperity, and liberty, such as would stand without example in the world's history, in comparison with which the most lauded conditions in earlier times would drop into a pale shadow.

It is this which must be called the political idea of the working class, its conception of the purpose of the State, which, as you see, is just as different, and in a perfectly corresponding manner, from the conception of the purpose of the State in the capitalist class as the principle of the working class—a share of all in the determination of public policy, or universal suffrage—is from the corresponding principle of the capitalist class—the property qualification.

The line of thought here developed is therefore what must be pronounced the idea of the working class. It is that which I had in view when, at the beginning, I spoke of the connection between the particular period of history in which we live and the idea of the working class. It is this period, beginning with February, 1848, which has the task of bringing such a political idea to realization, and we may congratulate ourselves that we have been born in a time which is destined to see the accomplishment of this most glorious work of history, and in which we have the privilege of lending a helping hand.

But for all who belong to the working class there follows from what I have said the duty of an entirely new attitude. Nothing is more effective in impressing upon a class a dignified and deeply moral stamp than the consciousness that it is destined to be the ruling class; that it is called upon to elevate the principle of its class to the principle of the whole historical period; to make its idea the leading truth of the whole of society, and so, in turn, to shape society into a reflection of its own character. The lofty historical honor of this destiny must lay hold upon all your thoughts. It is no longer becoming to you to indulge in the vices of the oppressed, or the idle distractions of the thoughtless, or even the harmless frivolity of the insignificant. You are the rock upon which the church of the present is to be built.

The lofty moral earnestness of this thought should entirely fill your mind, should fill your hearts and shape your whole life to be worthy of it and conformable to it. The moral earnestness of this thought, without ever leaving you, must stand for better thoughts in your shop during your work, in your leisure hours, your walks, your meetings; and, even when you lie down to rest on your hard couch, it is this thought which must fill and occupy your soul until it passes into the realm of dreams. The more exclusively you fill your minds with this moral earnestness, the more undividedly you are influenced by its warmth—of this you may be assured—the more you will hasten the time in which our present historical period has to accomplish its task, the sooner you will bring about the fulfilment of this work.

If, among those who listen to me today, there were even two or three in whom I have succeeded in kindling the moral warmth of this thought, with that fullness which I mean and which I have described to you, I should consider even that a great gain, and account myself richly rewarded for my presentation.

Above all, your soul must be free from discouragement and doubt, to which an insufficiently valid consideration of historical efforts might easily lead. So, for instance, it is absolutely false that in France the Republic was overthrown by the coup d'etat of December, 1851.

What could not maintain itself in France, what really was destroyed at that time, was not the Republic but that republic, which, as I have already shown you, abolished, by the law of May 30, 1850, the universal franchise, and introduced a disguised property qualification for the exclusion of the workingman. It was the capitalist republic which wished to put the stamp of the bourgeoisie—the domination of capital—upon the republican forms of the State; it was this which gave the French usurper the possibility, under an apparent restoration of the universal franchise, to overthrow the Republic, which otherwise would have found an invincible bulwark in the breast of the French workingman. So what in France could not maintain itself, and was overthrown, was not the Republic, but the bourgeois republic; and, on really correct consideration, the fact is confirmed, even by this example, that the historical period which began with February, 1848, will no longer tolerate any State which, whether in monarchical or in republican form, tries to impress upon it, or maintain within it, the controlling political stamp of the third class of society.

From the lofty mountain tops of science the dawn of a new day is seen earlier than below in the turmoil of daily life.

Have you ever beheld a sunrise from the top of a high mountain? A purple line colors blood-red the farthest horizon, announcing the new light. Clouds and mists collect and oppose the morning red, veiling its beams for a moment; but no power on earth can prevail against the slow and majestic rising of the sun which, an hour later, visible to all the world, radiating light and warmth, stands bright in the firmament. What an hour is, in the natural phenomena of every day, a decade or two is in the still more impressive spectacle of a sunrise in the world's history.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: The word bourgeoisie is henceforth used throughout the discussion to designate the political party now defined.—TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 48: Here the speaker quotes statistics showing that, on the average, throughout Prussia, a vote by a man of the first class has as much weight as seventeen votes by men of the third class.—TRANSLATOR.]

* * * * *



SCIENCE AND THE WORKINGMEN (1863)

[A speech delivered by Lassalle in his own defense before the Criminal Court of Berlin on the charge of having incited to class hatred.]

TRANSLATED BY THORSTEIN B. VEBLEN, PH.D. Lecturer in Economics, University of Missouri

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court:

I shall have to make my beginning with an appeal to your indulgence. My defense will go somewhat into detail. It will, on that account, necessarily be somewhat long. But I consider myself justified in pursuing this course, first, by the magnitude of the penalty with which I am threatened under Section 100 of the Criminal Code—the full extent of this penalty amounting to no less than two years' imprisonment. In the second place, and more particularly, I consider my course justified by the fact that this trial by no means centres about a man and the imposition of a penalty.

You will, therefore, permit me, without further preliminary, to carry the discussion from the region of ordinary court-room routine to that higher level on which it properly belongs.

The indictment brought against me is an evil and deplorable sign of the times. It not only offends the common law, but it is a notable violation of the Constitution. This is the first count in the defense which I have to offer.

I. Article 20 of the Constitution reads: "Science and its teaching is free."

What may be the meaning of this phrase in the Constitution, "is free," unless it means that science and its teaching are not subject to the ordinary provisions of the Criminal Code? Is this expression, "Science and its teaching is free," perhaps to be taken as meaning "free within the limits of the general provisions of the criminal code?" But within these limits every expression of opinion is absolutely free—not only science and its teaching. So long as they live within the general specifications of the criminal code, every newspaper writer and every market woman is quite free to write and say whatever they choose. This liberty, which is conceded to all expressions of opinion, need not and could not be proclaimed by a special article of the Constitution as a peculiar concession to "science and its teaching."

To put such a construction upon this article of the Constitution amounts to reading it out of the Constitution, to so interpreting it that it has nothing to say,—which is in our time by no means a neglected method of quietly putting the Constitution out of the way.

Now, the first principle of legal interpretation is that a provision of law must not be so interpreted as to make it superfluous or absurd, or to virtually expunge it. This, of course, applies with peculiar force to an article of the Constitution. There can accordingly be no doubt, Gentlemen, that precisely this was the intention of this provision of the Constitution; namely, that the prerogative was to be conceded to science that it should not lie under the limitations which the general criminal code imposes upon every-day, trivial expressions of opinion.

It is easy to understand that the legislature of any country will seek to protect the institutions of the country. In the nature of the case, the laws forbid inciting the citizens of a country to disorderly outbreak against the constituted authority.

Indeed, if we accept certain current views of law and order we have no difficulty in understanding that the law may consistently forbid all such appeal to the passions as is designed to foster contempt and disregard of existing conventions, or to stir up sentiments of hatred and distrust in their populace through a direct appeal to the unstable emotions.

But what is in the eternal nature of things free, on which no limits must be imposed, the importance of which to the State itself is greater than that of any single provision of law, to the free exercise of which no provision of law can set bounds—that is the impulse to scientific investigation.

No situation and no institution is perfect. Such a thing may happen as that an institution which we are accustomed to consider the most unimpeachable and indispensable, may, in fact, be vicious in the highest degree, and be most seriously in need of reform.

Will any one deny this whose view comprehends the changes which history records since the days of the Hindus or the Egyptians? Or even if he looks no further than the narrow space of the past one hundred years?

The Egyptian fellah warms the hearth of his squalid mud hut with the mummies of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the all-powerful builders of the everlasting pyramids. Customs, conventions, codes, dynasties, states, nations come and go in incontinent succession. But, stronger than these, never disappearing, forever growing, from the earliest beginnings of the Ionic philosophy, unfolding in an ever-increasing amplitude, outleaping all else, spreading from one nation and from one people to another, and handed down, with devout reverence, from age to age, there remains the stately growth of scientific knowledge.

And what is the source of all that unremitting progress, of all that uninterruptedly, but insensibly, broadening amelioration which we see peacefully accomplishing itself in the course of history, if it is not this same scientific knowledge? And, this being so, science must have its way without restraint; for science there is nothing fixed and definite, to which its process of chemical analysis may not be applied, nothing sacred, no noli me tangere. Without free scientific inquiry, therefore, there is no outcome but stagnation, decline and barbarism. And, while free scientific inquiry is the perennial fountain-head of all progress in human affairs, this inquiry and its gradually extending sway over men's convictions, is at the same time the only guarantee of a peaceable advance. Whoever stops up this fountain, whoever attempts to prevent its flowing at any point, or to restrain its bearing upon any given situation, is not only guilty of cutting off the sources of progress, but he is guilty of a breach of the public peace and of endangering the stability of the State. It is through the means of such scientific inquiry and its work of painstaking elaboration that the exigencies of a progressively changing situation are enabled gradually, and without harm, to have their effect upon men's thinking and upon human relations, and so to pass into the life of society. Whoever obstructs scientific inquiry clamps down the safety valve of public opinion, and puts the State in train for an explosion. He prohibits science from finding out the malady and its remedy, and he thereby substitutes the resulting convulsions of the death struggle for a diagnosis and a judicious treatment.

Unrestrained freedom of scientific teaching is, accordingly, not only an inalienable right of the individual, but, what is more to the point, it is, primarily and most particularly, a necessity of life to the community; it involves the life of the State itself.

Therefore has society formulated the provision that "Science and its teaching is free," without qualification, without condition, without limits; and this proviso is incorporated into the Constitution, in order to make it plain that it must remain inviolate even at the hands of the law-giver himself, that even he must not for a moment overlook or disregard it. And so it serves as pledge of the continual peaceable development of social life down to the remotest generations.

Does a question present itself at this point, Gentlemen? Am I setting up a new and unheard-of theory on this head?

Am I, possibly, misconstruing the wording of the Constitution in order to extricate myself from an embarrassing criminal process?

On the contrary, nothing is easier than to prove to you from the evidences of history that this provision of the Constitution has never been taken in any other sense; that for long centuries before the days of the Constitution this theory has been current among us in usage and practice; that it is by ancient tradition a characteristic feature of the culture of all Germanic peoples.

In the days of Socrates, it was still possible to be indicted for having taught new gods (Greek: katnos theous), and Socrates drank the hemlock under such an indictment.

In antiquity all this was natural enough. The genius of antiquity was so utterly identified with the conditions of its political life, and religion was so integral an element in the foundations of the ancient State, that the ancient mind was quite incapable of divesting itself of these convictions, and so getting out of its integument. The spirit of antiquity must stand or fall with its particular political conventions, and, in the event, it fell with them.

Such being the spirit of those times, it follows that any scientific doctrine which carried a denial of any element of the foundations of the State was in effect an attack upon the nation's life and must necessarily be dealt with as such.

All this changes when the ancient world passes away and the Germanic peoples come upon the scene. These latter are peoples gifted with a capacity to change their integument. By virtue of that faculty for development that belongs to the guiding principle of their life, viz.: the principle of the subjective spirit,—by virtue of this, these latter are possessed of a flexibility which enables them to live through the most widely varied metamorphoses. These peoples have passed through many and extreme transformations, and, instead of meeting their death and dissolution in the process, they have by force of it ever emerged on a higher plane of development and into a richer unfolding of life.[49]

The means by which these peoples are able to prepare the way for and to achieve these transmutations through which they constantly emerge to that fuller life, the rudiments of which are inborn in them, is the principle of an unrestrained freedom of scientific research and teaching.

Hence it comes that this instinct of free thought among these peoples reaches expression very early, much earlier than the modern learned world commonly suspects. "We are mistakenly in the habit of thinking of free scientific inquiry as a fruitage of modern times. But among these peoples that instinct is an ancient one which asserts that free inquiry must be bound neither by the authority of a person nor by a human ordinance; that, on the contrary, it is a power in itself, resting immediately upon its own divine right, superior to and antedating all human institutions whatever.

"Quasi lignum vitae," says Pope Alexander IV. in a constitution addressed to the University of Paris in 1256, "Quasi lignum vitae in Paradiso Dei, et quasi lucerna fulgoris in Domo Domini, est in Sancta Ecclesia Parisiensis Studii disciplina." "As the tree of life in God's Paradise and the lamp of glory in the house of God, such in the Holy Church is the place of the Parisian corporation of learning." To appreciate the import of these words of the holy father, it should be borne in mind that in the Middle Ages all things whatever lived only by virtue of a corporate existence, so that learning existed only as incorporated in a university.

It would be a serious mistake to believe that the universities of the Middle Ages rested that prerogative of scientific censure—censura doctrinatis—to which they laid claim in such a comprehensive way, upon these and other like papal or imperial and royal decrees of establishment. Petrus Alliacensis, a man whom the University of Paris elected as its magnus magister in 1381, and who afterward wore the archiepiscopal and also the cardinal's hat, tells us that not ex jure humano, not from human legislation, but ex jure divino, from divine law, does science derive its competence to exercise the censura; and the privileges and charters granted by popes, emperors and kings are nothing more than the acts of recognition of this prerogative of science that comes to it ex jure divino, or, as an alternative expression has it, ex jure naturali, by the law of nature. And in this, Petrus Alliacensis is substantially borne out by all the later scholastics.

Gentlemen, we are in the habit of giving ourselves airs and of looking down on the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and barbarism. But in so doing we are frequently in the wrong, and in no respect are we more thoroughly in the wrong than in passing such an opinion upon the position of science in the Middle Ages. Frequent and most solemn are the cases in which recognition is made of the right of science to raise her voice without all regard to king and pope, and even against king and pope.

We have recently witnessed a conflict between the government and the house of deputies as to the meeting of expenditures not granted by the house. An impression has been diligently spread abroad through the country that this is an unheard of piece of boldness and a subversive assumption of power on the part of the house of deputies, and indeed there have not been wanting deputies who have been astonished at their own daring, and have taken some pride in it.

But, on the other hand, Gentlemen, in February, 1412, the University of Paris, which was in no way intrusted with an oversight or a control of this country's fiscal affairs, took occasion to address a memorial to the King of France, Charles VI., as it said: "_pour la chose publique du votre royaume_"—on the public concerns of the realm. And in this memorial the university subjects the fiscal administration of the country, together with other branches of the administration, to a drastic criticism, and passes a verdict of unqualified condemnation upon it. This _remonstrance_ of the University of Paris rises to a degree of boldness, both in its demands and in its tone, that is quite foreign to anything which our house of deputies has done or might be expected to do. It points out that the revenues have not been expended for the purposes for which they were levied—"_on appert clairement, que les dictes finances ne sont point employees a choses dessus dictes_," etc.—and it closes this its review with the peremptory demand: "_Item, et il fault savoir, ou est cette finance,"—"Now, we have a right to know what has become of these funds." It describes the king's fiscal administration, including the highest officials, the finance ministers, gouverneurs and treasurers, as a gang of lawless miscreants, a band of rogues conspiring together for the ruin of the country. It upbraids the king himself with having packed the parliament of Paris, and so having corrupted the administration of justice. It points out to him that his predecessors carried on the government by means of much smaller revenues: "_au quel temps estoit le royaume bien gouverne, autrement que maintenant_"—"when the country was well governed, as is not the case today." The _remonstrance_ goes on to picture the burdens which rest upon the poor, and to demand that these burdens be lightened by means of a forced loan levied upon the rich. And the _remonstrance_ closes with the declaration that all this, which it has set forth is, in spite of its length, but a very adequate presentation of the matter, in so much that it would require several days to describe all the misgovernment the country suffered.



The university rests its right to make such a remonstrance upon this ground alone,—that it is the spokesman of science, of which all men know that it is without selfish interest, that there are neither public offices nor emoluments in its keeping, and that it is not concerned with these matters in any connection but that of their investigation; but precisely for this reason, it is incumbent upon science to speak out openly when the case demands it.

And the conclusion to which it comes is of no less serious import than this: It is the king's duty, without all delay (sans quelque dilacion) to dismiss all comptrollers (gouverneurs) of finance from office, without exception (sans nul excepter), to apprehend their persons and provisionally to sequestrate their goods, and, under penalty of death and confiscation of property, to forbid all communication between the lower officials of the fisc and these comptrollers.

If you will read this voluminous remonstrance, Gentlemen—you may find it in the annals of that time by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (liv. I. c. 99, Tom. II. p. 307 et seq., ed. Douet d'Aroy)—you cannot avoid seeing that, had this memorial been promulgated in our time, e.g., by the University of Berlin, there is scarce an offense enumerated in the code but would have been found in it by the public prosecutor. Defamation and insult of officials in the execution of their office, contempt and abuse of the government's regulations and the disposition taken by the officials, lese majeste, incitement of the subjects of the State to hatred and disrespect—and, indeed, I know not what all would be the offenses which our prosecutors would have discovered in the document. It is less than a year since, according to the newspapers, a disciplinary inquiry was instituted with respect to a memorial of a very different tenor, wherein one of our universities declined the mandatory suggestions addressed to the university by the ministers in regard to a given appointment. But, at that earlier day, in the dark ages, such was not the custom. On the other hand, in compliance with the university's demands, the treasurer of the crown, Audry Griffart, together with many others of the high officers of finance, was taken into custody, while others avoided a like fate only by escaping into a church vested with the right of asylum.

That was in 1412. But already eighty years before that date there occurred another, and perhaps even more significant case, which I may touch upon more briefly. Pope John XXII. promulgated a new construction of the dogma of visio beatifica and had it preached in the churches. The University of Paris,—nec pontificis reverentia prohibuit, says the report, quominus veritati insistereat,—"reverence of the holy father prevented not the university from declaring the truth"—, although the matter then in question was an article of the faith and lay within a field within which the competence of the pope could not be doubted, still the university, on the 22d of January, 1332, put forth a decree in which this construction of the dogma was classed to be erroneous.

Philip VI. served this decree upon the pope, then resident at Avignon, with the declaration that, unless he recanted as the decree required, he would have him burned as a heretic. And the pope, in fact, recanted, although he was then on his deathbed. All of which you may find set forth in Bulas, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis. (Paris, 1668, fol. Tom. IV. p. 375 et seq.)

These instances, which might be multiplied at will, may suffice to show how unqualified was the freedom of science even in early days, constrained by no punitive limitation at the hands of pope or king; for, be it remembered, in the Middle Ages, science had, as I have before remarked, only a corporate existence in its bearers, the universities. So that the view for which I speak has practically been accepted as much as five hundred years back, even in Catholic times and among Latin peoples.

But now comes Protestantism and creates its political structure, which it erects on precisely this broad principle of free thought and free research. This principle has since that epoch been the foundation upon which our entire political life has rested. A protestant State has no other claim to existence than precisely this—cannot possibly exist on other ground. When has there, since that time, been talk of a penal prosecution in Prussia on account of a scientific doctrine?

Christian Wolf, at Halle, popularized the Leibnizian philosophy, and it was then brought to the notice of the soldier-king, Frederick William I., that, according to Wolf's teaching of preestablished harmony, deserting soldiers did not desert by their own free will but by force of this peculiar divine arrangement of a preestablished harmony;[50] wherefore this doctrine, being spread abroad among the military, could not but be very detrimental to the maintenance of military discipline. It is true, this soldier-king, whose regiments were his State, was incensed at all this in the highest degree, and that he forthwith, in November, 1723, issued an order-in-council against Wolf, ordering him on penalty of the halter, to leave Prussian ground within twice twenty-four hours—and Wolf was obliged to flee. But, inasmuch as the king's lettres de cachet in that time permitted no appeal, they are also passed over in history as being devoid of interest or historic significance. It may be added that the soldier-king had simply perpetrated a gratuitous outrage, and had not set the claims of law and right aside. He threatened to hang Wolf, and this threat he could have carried out with the help of his soldiers. Even brute force is not devoid of dignity when it acts openly and above-board. He did not insult his courts by asking them to condemn scientific teaching. It did not occur to him to disguise his act of violence under the forms of law.

Moreover, no sooner had Frederick the Great ascended the throne, 31st of May, 1740, than he, six days later, 6th of June, 1740, sent a note to the Councillor of the Consistory, Reinbeck, directing the recall of Wolf. Even Frederick William I. had repented of his violence against Wolf and had in vain, in the most honorable terms, addressed letters of recall to him. But Frederick the Great, while he too had use for soldiers, was no soldier-king, but a statesman. The note to Reinbeck runs: "You are requested to use your best endeavor with respect to this Wolf, who is a person that seeks and loves the truth, who is to be held in high honor among all men, and I believe you will have achieved a veritable conquest in the realm of truth if you persuade Wolf to return to us."

So it appears, then, that also this conflict serves only to add force to the ancient principle that scientific research and the presentation of scientific truth is not to be bound by any limitations or by any considerations of expediency, and must find its sole and all sufficient justification in itself alone. This principle hereby achieved a new lustre and gained the full authentication of the crown.

Even the existence of God was not shielded from the discussion of science. Science was allowed, as it is still allowed, to put forth its proofs against his existence. The provisions of the new penal code bear only upon blasphemous utterances, such revilings of God as may offend those who believe otherwise, not upon the denial of his existence.

For many decades before the days of the Constitution the unquestioned liberty of science on Prussian ground had served the antagonists of Prussia as their supreme recourse, their chief boast and proudest ornament. You will remember the extraordinary sensation created by the case of Bruno Bauer, the Privat Docent on the theological faculty at Bonn, whom it was attempted to deprive of his licentia docendi[51] at the ominous instance of the absolutist-pietistical Eichhorn ministry, because of his peculiar doctrine concerning the gospel. This was the first case during the present century in which an assault has been attempted upon the freedom of scientific teaching, and even this was an infinitely less heinous one than the present. The faculties of the university were deeply stirred, and for months together official pronunciamentos swarmed about the town; men of the highest standing, such as Marheinecke and others, declared that protestantism and enlightenment were threatened in their very foundations in case such usurpation, hitherto unheard of in Prussia, were allowed to take its course. And even such expressions of opinion as reached a conclusion subservient to the ministerial view based their conclusion on the ground that the case in question concerned a licentia docendi in the theological faculty, with the fundamental principles of which Bauer's doctrines were incompatible. They took care expressly to declare that had the question concerned a licentia docendi in any one of the nontheological faculties, in a philosophical faculty, e.g., the decision must necessarily have been reversed. No one, not even Eichhorn himself, harbored the conceit that this doctrine and its teaching was to be dealt with by the criminal court. A teacher who spread abroad scientific teachings subversive of theological doctrines was deprived of the opportunity to proclaim his teaching from a theological chair; but to call in the jailer to suppress him—to that depth of subservience to absolutism had no one at that time descended. Alas, that Eichhorn, the much berated, could not have lived to see this day! With what admiration and with what gratification would he have looked upon his "constitutional" successors!

Even in the days of Eichhorn's pietistical absolutism, with its ecclesia militans of obscurantism, there survived so much of a sense of decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the liberty of scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censure which in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. In their search for some tenable and tangible criterion of the scientific character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hit upon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk—books of more than twenty forms were exempt from censure. But however awkward the outcome, the aim of the provision is not to be denied.

These ancient traditions, with more than five hundred years of prescriptive standing; this principle which prevailed by usage and acceptance among all modern peoples long before it was embodied in legal form; this primordial deliverance of the spiritual life of the Germanic nations is the substantial fact which our modern society has now finally embodied in Article 20 of the Constitution and so has constituted a norm for the guidance of all later law-givers, in other words: "Science and its teaching is free."

It is free without qualification, without limits, without bolts and bars. Under established law everything has its limitations,—every power, every function, every vested authority. The only thing which remains without bounds or constituted limitation, whose privilege it is to over-spread and to overlie all established facts, in such boundless and unhindered freedom as the sun and the air, is the irradiating force of theoretical research.

Scientific theory must be free even to the length of license. For, even if we could speak of a license in science and its teaching,—which, by the way, is most seriously to be questioned,—this is by all means a point at which an attempt to guard against abuse in one case would be liable in a million instances to put a check upon the blessings of rightful use. If any given measures of state, or any given class institutions, were shielded from scientific discussion, so that science might not teach that the arrangements in question are inadequate or detrimental, iniquitous or destructive,—under these circumstances, what genius could there be of such comprehensive reach, so far overtopping the spiritual level of all his contemporaries and all succeeding generations, as even to surmise the total extent of the loss which would thereby be sustained? What fruitful discoveries and developments, what growth of spiritual power and insight would be stifled in the germ by one such rigid interdict upon abuse; and what violent convulsions and what decay might not come upon the State in consequence of it?

The question is also fairly to be asked: what is legitimate use and what is abuse of science? Where lies the line between them, and who determines it? This discretion would have to lie, not with a court of law, but with a court made up of the flower of scientific talent of the time, in all departments and branches of science.

However enlightened your honorable body may be—and indeed the more enlightened the more unavoidably—this proposition must appeal to you as beyond question. What am I saying? The flower of the scientific talent of the time? No; that would not answer. The scientific genius of all subsequent time would have to be included; for how often does history show us the pioneers of science in sheer contradiction with the accepted body of scientific knowledge of their own time! It may take fifty, and it may often take a hundred years of discussion in scientific matters to settle the question as to what is true and legitimate and what is abuse.

In point of fact, there has hitherto been not an attempt, since the adoption of the constitution, to bring an indictment against any given scientific teaching.

Gentlemen, since 1848—since 1830—we have here in Prussia had many a sore and heavy burden to bear, and our shoulders are lame and tired with the bearing of them. But even under the Manteuffel-Westphalen administration, and until today, we have been spared this one indignity, of being called upon to see a scientific doctrine cited before the court.

The keenest attacks, attacks which, taken by themselves, might easily have been subject to criminal prosecution, have suffered no prosecution in any case where they have been embodied in a scientific work and when promulgated in the form of a scientific doctrine.

I am myself in a position to testify on this point. It is not quite two years since I published a work in which, I believe, I have succeeded in contributing something to the advancement of your own science, Gentlemen,—the science on which the administration of justice is based. The work of which I speak is my "System of Acquired Rights." (System der erworbenen Rechte.) In this work I take occasion to say (Vol. I., p. 238): "Science, whose first duty is the most searching inquiry and concise thinking, can on this account in no way deprive itself of the right to formulate its conceptions with all the definiteness and concision which the clearness of these conceptions itself requires." And proceeding on this ground I go on, in the further discussion, to show that the agrarian legislation of Prussia subsequent to 1850 is nothing else—to quote my own words literally—than a robbery of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy landed aristocracy, illegal and perpetrated in violation of the perpetrators' own sense of equity.

How easy would it not have been, if the expressions had occurred elsewhere than in a scientific treatise, to find that they embodied overt contempt of the institutions of the State, and incitement to hatred and disregard of the regulations of the government. But they occurred in a scientific treatise—they were the outcome of a painstaking scientific inquiry,—therefore they passed without indictment.

But that was two years ago.

In return for the accusation which has been brought against me, I, in my turn, retort with the accusation that my accusers have this day brought upon Prussia the disgrace that now for the first time since the State came into existence scientific teaching is prosecuted before a criminal court. For what can the public prosecutor say to my accusation, since he concedes the substance of my claims, since he is compelled to acknowledge that science and its teaching is free, and therefore free from all penal restraint? Will he contend, perhaps, that I do not represent science? Or will he, possibly, deny that the work with which this indictment is concerned is a scientific work? The prosecutor seems to feel himself hampered by the fact that he has here to do with a scientific production, for he begins his indictment with the sentence: "While the accused has assumed an appearance of scientific inquiry, his discussion at all points is of a practical bearing." The appearance of scientific inquiry? And why is it the appearance only? I call upon the prosecutor to show why only the appearance of scientific inquiry is to be imputed to this scientific publication. I believe that in a question as to what is scientific and what not, I am more competent to speak than the public prosecutor.

In various and difficult fields of science I have published voluminous works; I have spared no pains and no midnight vigils in the endeavor to widen the scope of science itself, and, I believe, I can in this matter say with Horace: Militavi non sine gloria.[52] But I declare to you: Never, not in the most voluminous of my works, have I written a line that was more carefully thought out in strict conformity to scientific truth than this production is from its first page to its last. And I assert further that not only is this brochure a scientific work, as so many another may be that presents in combination results already known, but that it is in many respects a scientific achievement, a development of new scientific conceptions.

What is the criterion by which the scientific standing of a book is to be judged? None else, of course, than its contents.

I beg you, therefore, to take a look at the contents of this pamphlet. Its content is nothing else than a philosophy of history, condensed in the compass of forty-four pages, beginning with the Middle Ages and coming down to the present. It is a development of that objective unfolding of rational thought which has lain at the root of European history for more than a thousand years past; it is an exposition of that inner soul of things resident in the process of history that manifests itself in the apparently opaque, empirical sequence of events and which has produced this historical sequence out of its own moving, creative force. It is, in spite of the brief compass of the pamphlet, the strictly developed proof that history is nothing else than the self-accomplishing, by inner necessity increasingly progressive unfolding of reason and of freedom, achieving itself under the mask of apparently mere external and material relations.

In the brief compass of this pamphlet, I pass three great periods of the world's history in review before the reader; and for each one I point out that it proceeds on a single comprehensive idea, which controls all the various, apparently unrelated, fields of development and all the different and widely-scattered phenomena that fall within the period in question; and I show that each of these periods is but the necessary forerunner and preparation for the succeeding period, and that each succeeding period is the peculiar and imminently necessary continuation, the consequence and unavoidable consummation of the preceding period, and that these together, consequently, constitute a comprehensive and logically inseparable whole.

First comes the period of feudalism. I here show that feudalism, in all its variations, rests on the one principle of control of landed property, and I also show how at that time, owing to the fact that society's productive work to a preponderating extent consisted in agriculture, landed property necessarily was the controlling factor, that is to say, the feature conditioning all political and social power and standing.

And I beg you, Gentlemen, to take note with what a strict scientific objectivity of treatment, how free from all propagandist bias, I proceed with the discussion. If there is any one datum which lends itself to the purposes of that propagandist bias which the public prosecutor claims to find in this pamphlet—namely the incitement of the indigent classes to hatred of the wealthy—it is the peasant wars. If there is any one fact which has hitherto been accepted, in scientific and in popular opinion alike, and more particularly among the unpropertied classes, with, the fondest remembrance, as a national movement iniquitously put down by the strong hand of violence, it is the peasant wars.

Now, unmoved by this predilection and this shimmer of sentiment, with which the science and the popular sense have united in investing the peasant wars, I go on to divest these wars of this deceptive appearance and show them up in their true light,—that they were at bottom a reactionary movement, which, fortunately for the cause of liberty, was of necessity doomed to failure.

Further: If there exists in Germany an institution which, as a question of our own times, I abominate with all my heart as the source of our national decay, our shame and our impotence, it is the institution of the territorial State.

Now, the pamphlet in question is so strictly scientific and objective in its method, so far removed from all personal bias, that I therein go on to show that the institution of the territorial State was, in its time, historically a legitimate and revolutionary feature; that it was an ideal advance, in that it embodied and developed the concept of a State independent of relations of ownership; whereas the peasant wars sought to place the State, and all political power and standing, on the basis of property.

I then, further, go on to show how the period of feudalism is succeeded by a second world-historic period. I show how, while the peasant wars were revolutionary only in their own delusion, there begins almost simultaneously with them a real revolution, namely, that accumulation of capitalistic wealth which arose through the development of industry. This wrought a thoroughgoing change in the whole situation,—a change which reached its final act, achieved its legal acceptance, in the French Revolution of 1789, but which had in point of fact for three hundred years been imperceptibly advancing toward its consummation.

I show in detail, which I need not here expound or recapitulate, what are the economic factors that were destined to push landed property into the remotest back-ground and leave it relatively powerless, by making the new industrial activity the great lever and the bearer of modern social wealth. All this took place by force of the new industrial activity the great lever and the bearer of methods which they brought in.

I show how this capitalized wealth, which has come forward as an outcome of this industrial development and has grown to be the dominant factor in this second period, must in its turn attain the position of prerogative as the recognized qualification of political competence, as the condition of a voice in the councils and policy of the State; just as was at an earlier time the case with landed property in relation to the public law of feudalism. I show how, directly and indirectly in the control of opinion, in the requirement of bonds and stamp duties, in the public press, in the growth of individual taxation, etc., capitalized wealth, as a basis of participation in public affairs, must work out its inherent tendency with the same thoroughness and the same historical necessity as landed property had done in its time.

And this second period, which has completed its three hundred and fifty years, as I further go on to show, is now essentially concluded. With the French Revolution of 1848 comes the dawning of a new, a third historical period. By its proclamation of universal and equal suffrage, regardless of property qualifications, this third period assigns to each and every one an equal share in the sovereignty, in the guidance of public affairs and public policy. And so it installs free labor as the dominating principle of social life, conditioned by neither the possession of land nor of capital.

I then develop the difference in point of ethical principles between the bourgeoisie and the laboring class, as well as the resulting difference in the political ideals of the two classes. The aristocratic principle assigned the individual his status on the basis of descent and social rank, whereas the principal for which the bourgeoisie stands contends that all such legal restriction is iniquitous, and that the individual must be counted simply as such, with no prerogative beyond guaranteeing him the unhindered opportunity to make the most of his capacities as an individual. Now, I claim, if we all were by native gift equally wealthy, equally capable, equally well educated, then this principle of equal opportunity would be adequate to the purpose. But since such equality does not prevail, and indeed cannot come to pass, and since we do not come into the world simply as undifferentiated individuals, but endowed in varying degree with wealth and capacities, which in turn result in differences of education; therefore, this principle is not an adequate principle. For, if under these actual circumstances, nothing were guaranteed beyond the unhindered opportunity of the individual to make the most of himself, the consequence must be an exploitation of the weaker by the stronger. The principle for which the working classes stand is this, that free opportunity alone will not suffice, but that to this, for the purposes of any morally defensible organization of society, there must be added the further principle of a solidarity of interests, a community and mutuality in development.

From this difference between the two classes, in point of ethical principle, follows, as a matter of course, the difference in political ideals.

The bourgeoisie has elaborated the principle that the end of the State is to protect the personal liberty of the individual and his property. This is the doctrine put forth by the scientific spokesmen of the bourgeoisie. This is the doctrine of its political leaders, of liberalism. But this theory is in a high degree inadequate, unscientific, and at variance with the essential nature of the State.

The course of history is a struggle against nature, against need, ignorance and impotence, and, therefore, against bondage of every kind in which we were held under the state of nature at the beginning of history. The progressive overcoming of this impotence,—this is the evolution of liberty, whereof history is an account. In this struggle we should never have made one step in advance, and we should never take a further step, if we had gone into the struggle singly, each for himself.

Now the State is precisely this contemplated unity and cooeperation of individuals in a moral whole, whose function it is to carry on this struggle, a combination which multiplies a million fold the force of all the individuals comprised in it, which heightens a million fold the powers which each individual singly would be able to exert.

The end of the State, therefore, is not simply to secure to each individual that personal freedom and that property with which the bourgeois principle assumes that the individual enters the state organization at the outset, but which in point of fact are first afforded him in and by the State. On the contrary, the end of the State can be no other than to accomplish that which, in the nature of things, is and always has been the function of the State,—in set terms: by combining individuals into a state organization to enable them to achieve such ends and to attain such a level of existence as they could not achieve as isolated individuals.

The ultimate and intrinsic end of the State, therefore, is to further the positive unfolding, the progressive development of human life. In other words, its function is to work out in actual achievement the true end of man; that is to say, the full degree of culture of which human nature is capable. It is the education and evolution of mankind into freedom.

As a matter of fact, even the older culture, which has become the inestimable foundation of the Germanic genius, makes for such a conception of the State. I may cite the words of the great leader of our science, August Boeckh: "The concept of the State must," according to him, "necessarily be so broadened as to make the State the contrivance whereby all human virtue is to be realized to the full."

But this fully developed conception of the State is, above all and essentially, a conception that is in a peculiar sense to be ascribed to the working classes. Others may conceive this conception of the State by force of insight and education, but to the working classes it is, by virtue of the helpless condition of their numbers, given as a matter of instinct; it is forced home upon them by material and economic facts.

Their economic situation necessarily breeds in these classes an instinctive sense that the function of the State is and must be that of helping the individual, through the combined efforts of all, to reach a development such as the individual in isolation is incapable of attaining.

In point of fact, however, this ethical conception of the State does not set up any concept that has not already previously been the real motor principle in the State. On the contrary, it is plain from what has already been said, that this, in an unconscious way, has been the essential nature of the State from the beginning. This essential character of the State has always in some measure asserted itself through the logical constraint of the course of events, even when such an aim has been absent from the conscious purposes of the State, even when opposed to the will of those in whose hands the power of control had rested.

In setting up this conception of the working classes as the dominant concept of the State, therefore, we do nothing more than articularly formulate what has all along, but obscurely, been the organic nature of the State, and bring it into the foreground as the consciously avowed end of society.

Herein lies the comprehensive unity and continuity of all human development, that nothing drops into the course of development from the outside. It is only that that is brought clearly into consciousness, and worked out on the ground of free choice, which has in substance all along constituted the obscurely and unconsciously effective organic nature of things.

With the French Revolution of 1848 this clearer consciousness has made its entry upon the scene and has been proclaimed. In the first place, this outcome was symbolically represented in that a workman was made a member of the provisional government; and, further, there was proclaimed universal, equal and direct suffrage, which is in point of method the means whereby this conception of the State is to be realized. February, 1848, therefore, marks the dawning of the historical period in which the ethical principle of the working classes is consciously accepted as the guiding principle of society.

We have reason to congratulate ourselves upon living in an epoch consecrated to the achievement of this exalted end. But, above all, it is to be said, since it is the destined course of this historical period to make their conception the guiding principle of society, it behooves the working classes to conduct themselves with all moral earnestness, sobriety and studious deliberation.

Such, expressed in the briefest terms, is the content and the course of argument of the disquisition in question.

What I have sought to accomplish in that argument is nothing else than to explain to my auditors the intrinsic philosophical content of the historical development, to initiate them into this most difficult of all the sciences, to bring home to them the fact that history is a logical whole which unfolds step by step under the guidance of inexorable laws.

One who gives himself up to work of this kind is entitled to address your public prosecutor in the words of Archimedes, when, at the sacking of Syracuse, he was set upon, sword in hand, by the savage soldiery while drawing and studying his mathematical figures in the sand: "Noli turbare circulos meos."[53]

To enable me to write this pamphlet, five different sciences, and more than that, have had to be brought into cooeperation and had to be mastered: History in the narrower sense of the term, Jurisprudence and the History of Law, Political Economy, Statistics, Finance, and, last and most difficult of the sciences, the science of thought, or Philosophy.

What a paragon of scientific erudition must the public prosecutor be, in whose eyes all this is not sufficient to lend a publication the attribute of scientific quality.

But the indictment itself, when it is more closely examined, is seen to assign the ground on which this work is held to lack the requisite scientific character. The indictment says: "While the defendant, Lassalle, has been at pains to give himself the appearance of scientific method in this address, still the address is after all of a thoroughly practical bearing."

So it appears, then, that, according to the public prosecutor, the address is not scientific because it is claimed to have a practical bearing. The test of scientific adequacy, according to the public prosecutor, is the absence of practical bearing. I may fairly be permitted to ask the public prosecutor—and it is a Schelling whose signature this indictment bears—where he has learned all this. From his father? Assuredly not. Schelling the elder assigns philosophy no less serious a task than that of transforming the entire cultural epoch. "It is conceived to be too much," says he in formulating an anticipated objection, "to expect that philosophy shall rehabilitate the times." To this his answer is: "But when I claim to see in philosophy a means whereby to remedy the confusion of the times, I have, of course, in mind not an impotent philosophy, not simply a product of workman-like dexterity, but a forceful philosophy which can face the facts of life, philosophy which, far from feeling itself impotent before the stupendous realities of life, far from confining itself to the dreary business of simple negation and destruction, draws its force from reality and, therefore, reaches effective and enduring results."

The public prosecutor, with his brand-new and highly extraordinary discovery, will scarcely find much comfort with the other men of the science.

In his Address to the German People, Fichte tells us: "What, then, is the bearing of our endeavors even in the most recondite of the sciences? Grant that the proximate end of these endeavors is that of propagating these sciences from generation to generation, and so conserving them; but why are they to be conserved? Manifestly only in order that they in the fulness of time shall serve to shape human life and the entire scheme of human institutions. This is the ulterior end. Remotely, therefore, even though it may be in distant ages, every endeavor of science serves to advance the ends of the State."

Now, Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Court, if I were to spend further speech in the refutation of this discovery of the public prosecutor—that impracticability is the test of science—I should be insulting your intelligence.

In the pamphlet in question my aim was the thoroughly practical one of bringing my readers to a comprehension of the times in which they live, and thereby permanently to affect their conduct throughout the course of their life and in whatever direction their activity may lie.

Now, then, what characteristic of scientific work is it which the public prosecutor finds wanting in all this? Is it, perhaps, that it falls short in respect of bulk? Is it the circumstance that this work is only a pamphlet of less than fifty pages, instead of comprising three folio volumes? But when was it decided that the bulk of a work, instead of its contents, is to be accepted as a test of its scientific character? Is the public prosecutor prepared, for instance, to deny that the papers presented by the members of the Royal Academy at their sessions are scientific productions? But nearly all of these are shorter than this of mine.

During the past year, as speaker for the Philosophical Society at the celebration of Fichte's birthday, it was my fortune to present an address in which I dealt intimately with the history of German metaphysics. That address fills only thirty-five pages as against the forty-four pages of the present pamphlet. Is the public prosecutor prepared to deny the character of science to that address because of its brevity?

Who will not, on the contrary, appreciate that the very brevity imposed by circumstances makes the scientific inquiry contained in this work all the more difficult and the more considerable? I was compelled to condense my exposition within the compass of a two-hours' address, a pamphlet of forty-four pages, at the same time that I was obliged to conform my presentation of the matter to an audience on whose part I could assume no acquaintance with scientific methods and results. To overcome obstacles of this kind and, at the same time, not to fall short in point of profound scientific analysis, as was the case in the present instance, requires a degree of precision, close application and clarity of thought far in excess of what is demanded in these respects in the common run of more voluminous scientific works.

I return, therefore, again to the question: What is the requirement of science with respect to which this address falls short? Is it, perhaps, that it offends the canons of science in respect of the place in which it was held?

This, in fact, touches the substantial core of this indictment, and, at the same time, the sorest spot of the whole. This address might well—so runs the prosecutor's reflection—have been delivered wherever you like—from the professor's chair or from the rostrum of the singing school, before the so-called elite of the educated people; but that it was actually delivered before the actual people, that it was held before workingmen and addressed to workingmen, that fact deprives it of all standing as a scientific work and makes it a criminal offense,—crimen novum atque inauditum.[54]

I might, of course, content myself with the answer that the substance of an address, and therefore its scientific character, is in no way affected by the place in which it happens to have been delivered, whether it is in the Academy of Science, before the cream of the learned world, or in a hall in the suburbs before an audience of machinists.

But I owe you, Gentlemen, a somewhat fuller answer. To begin with, let me express my amazement at the fact that here in Berlin, in the city where Fichte delivered his immortal popular lectures on philosophy, his speeches on the fundamental features of the modern epoch and his speeches on the German nation before the general public, that in this place and day it should occur to any one to fancy that the place in which an address is delivered has anything whatever to do with its scientific character.

The great destiny of our age is precisely this—which the dark ages had been unable to conceive, much less to achieve—the dissemination of scientific knowledge among the body of the people. The difficulties of this task may be serious enough, and we may magnify them as we like,—still, our endeavors are ready to wrestle with them and our nightly vigils will be given to overcoming them.

In the general decay which, as all those who know the profounder realities of history appreciate, has overtaken European history in all its bearings, there are but two things that have retained their vigor and their propagating force in the midst of all that shriveling blight of self-seeking that pervades European life. These two things are science and the people, science and the workingman. And the union of these two is alone capable of invigorating European culture with a new life.

The union of these two polar opposites of modern society, science and the workingman,—when these two join forces they will crush all obstacles to cultural advance with an iron hand, and it is to this union that I have resolved to devote my life so long as there is breath in my body.