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 coöperation 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 élite 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.
But, Gentlemen, is this view something new and entirely unheard-of in the realm of science? Let us see what Fichte himself, in his Addresses to the German People, has to say to the cultured classes, to whom he addresses these words: "It is particularly to the cultured classes of Germany that I wish to direct my remarks in the present address, for it is to these classes I hope in the first place to make myself intelligible. And I implore these classes, then, as the first step to be taken, to take the initiative in the work of reconstruction, and so, on the one hand, atone for their past deeds, and, on the other hand, earn the right to continued life in the future.
[Illustration: FLAX BARN IN LAREN From the Painting by Max
Liebermann]
It will appear in the course of this address that hitherto all the advance in the German nation has originated with the common people, and that hitherto all the great national interests have, in the first instance, been the affair of the people, have been taken in hand and pushed forward by the body of the people; so that today for the first time does it happen that the initiative in the cultural advance of the nation is committed to the hands of the cultured classes, and if they will but accept the commission it will be the first time when such has been the case. It will presently appear that it is quite impossible for these classes to determine how long the matter will yet rest in their discretion, how long the choice will yet be open to them whether to take the initiative in this matter or not, for the whole matter is nearly ripe to be taken in hand by the people, and it will be carried out by men sprung from the body of the people, who will presently be able to help themselves without assistance from us."
Fichte, then, knew and proclaimed this fact, that the realization of all the great national interests in the past has been the work of the common people and has never been carried out at the hands of the cultured classes. That, in spite of this knowledge, he turned to the cultured classes is due, as he himself says, to the hope he had of first and most readily making himself understood by them. It is because, in his apprehension, for the presentment of the matter to the people, the whole was, so he says, "only approaching readiness and maturity," but not yet ready and mature.
That it is possible today to do what in Fichte's time was recognized as the only fruitful thing to do, but, at the same time, as not then ready to be done, and therefore too serious to be undertaken,—this expresses the whole short step in advance that has been accomplished in Germany during the past fifty years; for you will seek in vain for the slightest progress on the part of the German government.
Fichte himself, in the passage cited, says that this advance is coming in the near future. This "near future" proves to have been fifty years removed, and I trust, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, that you will all consider a fifty-years' interval long enough to satisfy the requirements of the "near future."
But the men who, undeterred by all the difficulties of the task, put all their energies into this stupendous undertaking of carrying scientific knowledge and scientific habits of thought among the body of the people,—are they fairly open to the accusation of having sought to incite the indigent classes to hatred of the well-to-do? Do they not thereby really deserve the thanks and the affection of the propertied classes, and of the bourgeoisie above all?
Whence arises the bourgeoisie's dread of the people in political matters?
Look back, in memory, to the months of March, April, and May, 1848. Have you forgotten how things looked here at that time? The power of the police was broken; the people filled all the streets and public places. And all streets, all public places and all the people in the hands of Karbe, Lindenmüller, and other reckless agitators like them,—men without knowledge, without intelligence, without culture, thrown into prominence by the storm which stirred our political life to its depths. The bourgeoisie, scared and faint hearted, hiding in their cellars, trembling every instant for fear of their property and their lives, which lay in the hands of these coarse agitators, and saved only by the fact that these agitators were too good-natured to make such use of their power as the bourgeoisie feared they would. The bourgeoisie, secretly praying for the reëstablishment of the police power and quaking with a fright which they have not yet forgotten, the recollection of which still leaves them incapable of taking up the political struggle.
How came it that in a city which proudly calls itself the metropolis of intelligence, in so great a city, in the home of the most brilliant intellects,—how came it that the people here for months together could be at the disposal of Karbe and Lindenmüller and could tremble before them in fear for their life and property. Where was the intelligence of Berlin? Where were the men of science and of insight? Where were you, Gentlemen?
A whole city is never cowardly.
But these men reflected and told one another: The people do not understand our ways of thinking; they do not even understand our speech. There is a great gulf between our scientific views and the ways of the multitude, between the speech of scientific discussion and the habits of thought of the people. They would not understand us. Therefore the floor belongs to the coarsest.
So they reflected and held their peace. Now, Gentlemen, are you quite sure that a political upheaval will never recur? Are you ready to swear that you have reached the end of historical development? Or are you willing to see your lives and property again at the mercy of a Karbe and a Lindenmüller?
If not, then your thanks are due to the men who have devoted themselves to the work of filling up that gulf which separates scientific thought and scientific speech from the people, and so to raze the barriers that divide the bourgeoisie and the people. Your thanks are due these men, who, at the expense of their utmost intellectual efforts, have undertaken a work whose results will redound to the profit of each and all of you. These men you should entertain at the prytaneum, not put under indictment.
The place in which this address was held, therefore, can also not afford ground for exception as to its scientific character.
I have now shown you conclusively that the production is a scientific work.
But if, contrary to all expectation, this should still be questioned, although I do not for a moment consider it possible that it should be questioned by men as enlightened as you are, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court; now, in such a case, I seek refuge in the privilege which is accorded every cobbler and which you can all the less deny me, viz., to submit a question of workmanship in my trade to the award of men expert in the trade.
In the last resort, the question as to the scientific character of a given work is a question for the men of the trade, and therefore a question which may not be decided on a basis of common education and common culture alone, and therefore also not by a court of law. The question at issue does not concern jurisprudence, with which you are necessarily familiar, but it concerns other sciences with which you may well be unfamiliar, although, as a matter of chance, you may, in your private capacity, not your capacity as jurists, also be acquainted with these matters.
It is true, you may answer this question in the affirmative, your competence extends that far. For in very many cases is the scientific character of a given work manifest, even to the commonly instructed intelligence.
But to pass a negative opinion in the face of the expert testimony to which I provisionally appeal as a subsidiary recourse;[55] to that your competence does not extend, for the nicer question, whether in a given case the most profound researches of science may not, with a view to their readier apprehension, be presented in a facile and popular form, whether this fact of a facile presentation may not itself mark a peculiarly high achievement of scientific endeavor, in which all traces of the struggle, all difficulties and all the refractoriness of the materials handled have been successfully eliminated and the whole has in the outcome been reduced to the simplest and clearest terms; where the result presented is a scientific work of art, which, in the words of Schiller, has risen above the limitations of human infirmity and moves with such ease and freedom as to give the impression that it offers but the free play of the auditor's own unfolding thought; to decide with confidence whether you have to deal with a scientific work of this class, and to decide it with that certainty and security that is required in order to pass a sentence, that is something of which none but men trained in the science are capable.
This question, therefore, I beg that the following gentlemen: Privy Councillor August Böckh, Efficient Privy Councillor Johannes Schultze, formerly Director of the Ministry of Public Worship, Professor Adolf Trendelenburg, Privy Councillor and Chief Librarian Dr. Pertz, Professor Leopold Ranke, Professor Theodor Mommsen, Privy Councillor Professor Hanssen, all members of the Royal Academy of Science, and as specialists capable of judging in the matter, be constituted a subsidiary tribunal to pass on the question, whether the address in question is not in the strict sense a scientific production.
But, if such is found to be the case, then, as I have already explained, it has nothing to do with the penal code.
I have permitted myself to go exhaustively into an exposition of this, my first ground of defense, because, for the sake of the country itself and the dignity and liberty of science, and for the sake of establishing once for all a precedent which shall bar out all similar endeavors of the public prosecutor in the future, it is incumbent on me to adjure you to acquit me under Article 20 of the Constitution.
But it is not that recourse to this article is necessary to protect my person from the penalty of the law.
For, even were it held that the present case comes within the competence of the penal code, the law appealed to has in no wise been violated, and the paragraph cited by the public prosecutor has no application.
Even this one exception, alone would suffice to set the indictment aside; viz., that no objection is taken to any given passage in which the specified offense is alleged to occur; so that the prosecution proceeds wholely on an allegation of bias, and in the baldest manner. The indictment runs against a bias; that is all. But a bias is not actionable.
But I am not to be permitted to dispose of my defense in so easy a manner. The accusation of having endeavored to incite the poor to hatred of the rich is an accusation of such a kind that, apart from all question of punishment, it is likely to injure any citizen's name and fame. This accusation is of such character that, even if it is formally disproven on legal ground, it may still leave the accused an object of suspicion. You will, accordingly, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, take it simply as evidence of the respect I bear you when I now go on to clear my honor in your sight, with the same solicitude as that with which I have defended my freedom. To this end it is necessary for me to present the grounds of fact, as painstakingly as I have presented the grounds of law, on which this accusation is to be quashed, and you will, therefore, I am sure, hear me with the same forbearance if this second part of my defense turns out to be but little briefer than the first.
I am accused of having violated Section 100 of the penal code. This section reads as follows: "Any person who endangers or jeopardizes the public peace by publicly inciting the subjects of the State to hatred or to contempt of one another, is liable to punishment by a fine of not less than 20 and not more than 200 thalers, or by imprisonment of not less than one month and not more than two years."
This section of the law specifies three different conditions, which must be found to concur if it is to be applicable.
I. There must be incitement to hatred or to contempt;
II. This incitement must be directed to the detriment of given classes of the subjects of the State, and I am accordingly accused by the public prosecutor of having incited the class of the unpropertied against the class of the propertied;
III. This incitement must be of such a nature as to endanger the public peace.
These three conditions must concur, must combine, if the section of the law is to apply,—and not one of these conditions occurs.
As to I. There must be incitement to hatred and contempt; there can in the case before you be no question of this point, and for several reasons.
1. The offense specified in Section 100 cannot be committed except there be an intention to incite to hatred and contempt. A contingent incitement to hatred and contempt, an incitement by inadvertence, is in this case not conceivable. If such a contingent incitement, an unintended incitement to hatred and contempt, were conceivable, what would not the consequences be? We have, all of us, for instance, recently read certain speeches delivered in the upper house, which have, we will say, filled me,—and not me alone, Gentlemen, but along with me a very large part of the nation—with hatred and contempt to the point of distraction. Does it follow that the public prosecutor could take action against the speakers in question? He is not competent to do so, even aside from the political prerogative of the speakers, for, although such has been the effect of these speeches, the purpose of these gentlemen was assuredly not to stir up hatred and contempt. But it is equally true that no one can deny that the purpose of my address was to impart knowledge. The most that the public prosecutor can allege is that it was a matter of indifference to me if the knowledge imparted stirred up hatred and contempt,—an allegation without significance, since there is no such thing as an incitement to hatred and contempt by inadvertence.
But, in point of fact, a deliberate incitement of this kind is in the present case absolutely excluded for another reason, which at the same time establishes that the address in question could not even have had the effect of stirring up hatred and contempt. I, therefore, in order to prevent repetition, beg to present this reason in connection with the second, viz.: that my address could not have the effect of causing hatred and contempt.
I have, therefore, to say, as the second count under this head, that this address cannot possibly have had the effect of stirring up hatred and contempt, and a fortiori cannot have had that intention.
On what grounds alone can hatred and contempt be deserved?
On the ground of viciousness, which in turn is an attribute of voluntary human actions alone. But in this address of mine, I show that the dominance of this principle of the bourgeoisie, against which I am by the public prosecutor accused of inciting to hatred and contempt, is but a stage of economic and ethical development, which is the outcome of historical necessity, and that its nonexistence is an utter impossibility and that it therefore has all the character of natural necessity that belongs to the developmental progress of the earth.
Do we hate Nature because we have to struggle with her? Because we have to strive to guide her processes and improve her products?
But there is the further question: How has the public prosecutor understood my pamphlet?
The fundamental idea of my address is that the dominance of the bourgeoisie has in no wise been produced, consciously and by their own motion, intentionally and in a responsible manner, by the propertied class as persons or individuals. On the contrary, the bourgeois are but the unconscious, choiceless, and therefore irresponsible products, not the producers of the situation as it stands and as it has developed under the guidance of quite other laws than the direction of personal choice. Even their reluctance to surrender this their mastery I refer back to the laws of human nature, whose character it is to hold fast to whatever is and to account it necessary. But a doctrine which goes the length of denying the propertied class all responsibility for the existing state of things, which makes them a product instead of the producers of this state of things—this doctrine the public prosecutor construes to have incited to hatred and contempt of these persons.
For, be it noted, we have here to do with persons and classes of persons, under section 100, not with institutions established by the State, as under section 101.
No workingman has got so faulty an understanding of my address as the public prosecutor, and I leave it to him to say whether this is due to his lack of understanding or to his lack of will to understand.
But, more than all this, I go on to show that the dominance of the idea of the bourgeoisie is a great historic move in the liberation of humanity; that it was a most potent moral cultural advance; that in fact it was the historically indispensable prerequisite and transitional stage through development out of which the idea of the working class was to emerge.
I therefore must be said to reconcile the working class to the dominance of the bourgeoisie as an historical fact by showing the logical necessity of this dominance. I reconcile them to it, for a comprehension of the rationality of what restricts us is the fullest possible reconciliation to it.
And if I proceed, further, to show that the idea of the bourgeoisie is not the highest stage of the historical development, not the perfect flower of advancing improvement, but that beyond it lies yet a higher manifestation of the human spirit, and that this ulterior phase rests on the former as its base—does this mean that I incite to hatred and contempt of the former?
The working class might as well hate and despise themselves and all human nature, whether in their own or in their neighbors' persons, because it is the law of human nature to unfold step by step and to proceed to each succeeding stage of development from the indispensable vantage ground of the phase preceding.
If I had any predilection for homiletical discourse, Gentlemen, I should be quite justified in saying that I have exhorted the working classes to a filial piety toward the bourgeoisie, in that I have shown that the dominance of the bourgeoisie was the indispensable prerequisite and condition by transition out of which alone the idea of the working class could come forth. For even if the son, by grace of a freer and fuller education and a larger endowment of personal force, strives to place himself above the level on which his father stood, still he never forgets the source of his own blood and the author of his own being. How deep in the mud is it the intention to thrust the noblest of all the sciences in bringing this charge of criminal instigation against the doctrine that history is an unfolding evolution of reason and human liberty?
It was for long incomprehensible to me how the public prosecutor could use such words as instigation to hatred and contempt in this connection. In the end I have been able to explain this fact to myself only on this one supposition. The public prosecutor must have endeavored in reading this address, to put himself in the place of a working man and has then come to feel that he would in such a case be moved to hatred.
The public prosecutor, then, is sensible that he would hate.
Now, Gentlemen, I might say that this would be attributable to the peculiarity of his temperament, and that he had no call to generalize and go beyond that. But I will lend a hand to the public prosecutor in this perplexity. I will bring the charge against myself in a more telling form than he has been able to do. I will formulate it as the facts of the case require that it must be formulated if it is to be preferred at all. And in so doing, the more pointedly I may be able to bring to light the essential nature of the charge, the more utterly shall I annihilate it.
This is what the public prosecutor should have said:
It is true this address held by Lassalle appeals to the intellect of the auditors, not to their practical impulses or their emotions. It is accordingly true also that this address does not come within the sphere of competence of the penal code.
But in a person endowed with the normal complement of human sensibility, cognition, will and emotion are not so many insulated pigeonholes which stand in no relation to one another. Whenever the one compartment is full it flows over into the next. Will and emotion are servants of the intellect and are controlled by it.
Lassalle, it is true, has not a word to say of hatred and contempt; he is simply occupied with a theoretical exposition of how certain arrangements, for instance, the three-class suffrage, is pernicious. I am unable to confute this teaching. But I have this to say with respect to the organic unity of human nature, that if the doctrine is true then it follows that every normally constituted working man must come to hate and distrust not only these arrangements and institutions but also those who profit by them.
Such is the logical framework on which this indictment must proceed. This is the line of argument which avowedly or not, by logical necessity comes to expression in this indictment.
It is not I, but the public prosecutor speaking from the eminence of his curule chair, who proclaims to the working classes the awful doctrine: You must hate and distrust.
It is not for me, it is for the public prosecutor to square himself with the bourgeoisie.
But what is my answer to the public prosecutor and his indictment which charges me with his own offense?
My answer is a four-fold one:
In the first place a full recognition of the inadequacy or the viciousness of a given institution must arouse in any person of normal sensibility an enduring purpose to change such an institution, if possible, and the arousing of such an undying purpose in my hearers has necessarily been the aim of my scientific investigation, as it necessarily is the end of all scientific work. But such a purpose, so long as it does not utter itself in an illegal manner, is absolutely unconstrained by law. The like is true of all effort to arouse such a purpose, so long as it does not resort to illegal means. But such a purpose to amend the shortcomings of any established arrangement, is by no means the same thing as hatred and contempt of the arrangement in question; since these shortcomings are a matter of historical growth, of historical necessity; since, indeed, they may even be, in effect, a factor in the work of liberation, and a factor of the gravest consequence and of the most beneficial effect for cultural growth. Further reasons to the like effect have already been recited and I will not take up your time with their repetition and further development. Here, then, is the first hiatus in the public prosecutor's argument.
In the second place, if it actually follows in any given case that hatred and contempt is, for a normally constituted human being, the necessary consequence of a scientific knowledge of the facts, such hatred and contempt could by no means be laid under penalties by the legislator.
Whatever institution is so vicious that knowledge of it necessarily excites hatred and contempt, that institution should be hated and despised.
The legislator lays penalties upon such hatred and contempt as are but the effects produced by blind emotions and passions. But he has not imposed penalties upon human reason and the moral constitution of man. He consequently does not impose penalties upon hatred and contempt which are the necessary outcome of these two features of human nature. The public prosecutor construes section 100 to the effect that the legislator has therein intended to prohibit the use of reason and proscribe the moral nature of man. But such a purpose has not entered the thoughts of the law-giver. No court will put such a construction upon the law as to make the legislator the avowed enemy of intelligence and science,—and here come into bearing again all the arguments of my defense directed to Article 20 of the Constitution. The only meaning of these arguments in this connection is that even if science and its teaching were not by Article 20 of the Constitution exempt from the application of the criminal code, still section 100, except it be construed to intend the utter destruction of human nature, cannot be leveled against such hatred and contempt as is the necessary outcome of scientific knowledge.
In the third place, hatred and contempt of a given institutional arrangement or expedient is by no means the same thing as hatred and contempt of those persons who profit by the arrangement in question; whereas section 100 deals only with hatred of persons,—so that we have here the third break in the public prosecutor's argument, and it is a veritable saltomortale.
In the fourth place I have to present an argument of fact. The prosecutor's argument presents the most remarkable quid pro quo[56] that has ever come to light in a legal discussion. The point which I here touch upon constitutes the transition to the second part of my argument, showing that all proof touching the second condition to be fulfilled by the indictment is wanting; viz.: that even if there were ground for speaking of hatred and contempt in this connection, it is still quite plain that there has been no instigation to hatred or contempt of those against whom I am charged with having incited to hatred and contempt.
As to this second part of the indictment: I am accused of instigating the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes.
"By this presentation," says the indictment, "working men will plainly be incited to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the unpropertied classes will be inflamed against the propertied classes." And after having in this way, quietly and by subreption, introduced this its definition of the term "bourgeoisie," the indictment goes on to formulate its final charge as follows:
"It is accordingly charged that the above named citizen, F.L., (1), by his lecture etc., and (2) by publishing the pamphlet containing this same lecture, has publicly instigated the unpropertied classes of the State's subjects to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes."
It is true, in my address I speak of the "bourgeoisie." But what is my definition of this term? It will be sufficient to cite a single passage which contains the definition of "bourgeoisie" as used by me in this pamphlet. This will show what an incomprehensible, unheard-of, uncharacterisable quid pro quo the public prosecutor has attempted to impute to me in charging me with instigating the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes.
On page 20 of this pamphlet is the following passage, quoted literally:
"I have now reached the point, Gentlemen, where it becomes necessary that, in order to avoid a possible gross misapprehension of what I have to say, I explain what I mean by the term 'bourgeoisie' or 'great bourgeoisie,' as the designation of a political party—that I define what the word 'bourgeoisie' means in my use of it.
"The word 'bourgeoisie' might be translated into German by the term Bürgertum (citizenship, or the body of citizens). But that is not the meaning actually attached to the word. We are all citizens—workingmen, petty burghers, commercial aristocracy and all the rest alike. On the other hand the word 'bourgeoisie' has, in the course of historical development, come to designate a particular political bias and movement which I will now go on to characterize.
"At the time of the French Revolution, and, indeed, even yet, that entire body of subjects which is not of noble birth, was roughly divided into two sub-classes: First the class comprising those persons who, wholly or chiefly, get their income from their own labor and are without capital, or are, at the most, possessed of but a moderate capital which affords them the means of carrying on some employment from which they and their families derive their subsistence. This class comprises the workingmen, the lower middle classes (Kleinbürger), the citizen class and also the body of the peasants. The second class is made up of those persons who have the disposal of a large property, of a large capital, and who are producers or receivers of income on the basis of their possession of capital. These latter might be called the great burghers or commoners, or the capitalist gentry. But such a great burgher or capitalist gentleman, is not by reason of that fact a bourgeois. No commoner has any objection to raise because a nobleman in the bosom of his family finds comfort in his pedigree and in his lands. But when, on the other hand, this nobleman insists on making such pedigree or such landed property the basis of a peculiar importance and prerogative in the State, when he insists on making them a ground for controlling public policy, then the commoner takes offense at the nobleman and calls him a feudalist.
"The case is entirely similar as regards the distinctions in respect of property within the body of commoners.
"That the capitalist gentleman in his chamber takes pleasure in the high degree of comfort and the great advantage which large wealth confers upon its possessor,—nothing can be more natural, simpler or more legitimate than that he should do so."
Incidentally, then, Gentlemen, so far am I in this pamphlet from instigating the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the wealthy, that, on the contrary, I expressly declare myself for the legitimacy of such property. I explicitly declare that the satisfaction taken in the advantages and amenities which flow from such wealth are the most natural and legitimate things in the world.
Let me now go on with the definition referred to:
"The workingmen and the lower middle class, that is to say the class without capital, may be wholly justified in demanding that those by whose hands all that wealth which is the pride of our civilization is produced, whose hands have brought forth all these products without which society could not live for a single day—it may well be demanded that these should be secured an ample and unfailing income, and thereby be given an opportunity for some intellectual development, and that they be by this means put in the way of a truly human manner of life. But, while I am free to say that the working classes are fairly within their rights in making these demands of the State, and to stand out stiffly for their demands as being the essential purpose for which the State exists, yet the workingman must never allow himself to forget that all property that has once been acquired and is legally held must be considered lawful and inviolable."
Such, then, is the manner and degree of my instigation of the unpropertied class to hatred and distrust that I incontinently preach to them the inviolability and sacredness of all property acquired by the wealthy classes, and exhort them to respect it.
But I go on to say:
"In case the man of means is not content with the material amenities of large wealth, but insists that possession of wealth, of capital, be made the basis of a control to be exercised over the State, a condition of participation in the direction of public policy and of the direction of public affairs, then and only then does the man of means become a bourgeois; then does he make the fact of property a legal ground of political power; then does he stand forth as representative of a privileged class aiming to put the imprint of its prerogative upon all social features and institutions, just as truly as the nobility of the Middle Ages did with respect to the basis of their privilege, landed property."
Accordingly, in my use of the term, as I have explicitly and painstakingly defined it, the man of means, the man of the upper-middle class, is a bourgeois in case he proceeds to set up the essentially harmless and inoffensive fact of his large property as a legal condition of participation in the direction of public affairs; in short, when he proceeds to set up the ownership of capital as a legal and political prerogative, and so abolishes the equality of the propertied and the unpropertied classes before the law, and thereby infringes upon the liberty and further growth of the people, in the interest of accumulated wealth and continued upper-class mastery. Only under these circumstances, as I particularly point out, does the bourgeoisie become a privileged class, which it otherwise, in spite of all inequality of wealth, is not.
In my pamphlet I point out how all this has its effect through the census rating whereby admission to a share in the direction of public policy, through eligibility to any legislative body, is so limited by property qualifications as to make the possession of capital a prerequisite. I point out further that this effect follows equally whether the property qualification is open and above-board or under-hand, and finally that the existing three-class system of elections, dating back to 1849, amounts to such an under-hand, disguised property rating.
The point at which the pamphlet strikes, therefore, albeit in a purely theoretical way, is the three-class system of elections. It makes no attack upon the propertied classes, whose accumulated wealth, on the contrary, I am repeatedly at pains to define as wholly incontestable, inoffensive, inviolable and perfectly lawful.
This three-class system of elections is one of our political institutions.
Now, this being the case, why has not the public prosecutor indicted me under section 101 of the criminal code, "for having exposed the measures of the State to hatred and to contempt?" To be sure, if the prosecutor had chosen to make this charge, I should have known how to answer him. To go into this matter today would be superfluous, for I am not accused of this offense, and my defense would be drawn out endlessly if I were to defend myself against charges that have never been brought against me.
But why, among all impossible charges, does the public prosecutor choose to bring precisely the most impossible? Why does he make this substitution as to the point of my attack? I point out that the three-class system of elections is an injustice because it makes an essentially innocent difference in wealth a legal qualification for participation in the direction of public affairs; whereupon this envenomed accusation is brought against me that I have instigated the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied.
Is there, then, no remedy, Gentlemen, against such a public defamation of one's name and fame?
Can we say that among us the introduction, of the three-class system of elections is to be laid at the door of the propertied classes or the commonalty? Something of that kind might be said of the French bourgeoisie. In France the property qualification and rating was introduced as long ago as the revolutionary Assemblée Constituante. But the like has not been done by the German.
When the Prussian bourgeoisie came into power through the March revolution of 1848 it introduced universal and equal suffrage by the law of the 8th of April, 1848. The German bourgeoisie at St. Paul's Church, Frankfort, enacted universal equal suffrage.
The three-class system of elections which we now have, was arbitrarily imposed, imposed by the government.
Now, why does the public prosecutor shelter the government behind the backs of the Prussian bourgeoisie? A tout seigneur tout honneur![57]
It is the Prussian government, not the propertied classes, that must for all time and in the eyes of all people bear the responsibility of this arbitrarily imposed three-class system of elections.
But, whatever may have been the reasons which decided the public prosecutor to make this very singular substitution of grievances in his indictment—and we may perhaps presently come to find out what his reasons were—at any rate, this second ground of the indictment also fails. There has been no incitement against the propertied classes of the community; there has been no instigation against those against whom I am accused of instigating to hatred and contempt.
The third ground on which the indictment is brought, the charge of having endangered the public peace, fails likewise.
As to this third count:
Now, when the State speaks of the public peace it cannot be taken to mean peace of mind, for the State is not a pietistic overseer concerned about the subjects' peace of mind and the general sphere of spiritual edification. What it looks to is the peace of the streets. This is made quite plain by the phrase, "public peace."
The like is plain from all principles of law. Subjective states of mind do not concern the State; it is concerned with overt actions alone. It has, accordingly, no concern with hatred and contempt or with instigation thereto in so far as they are a matter of subjective sensibility only; but such instigation is subject to penalties only in case it is of such a nature as to lead to overt action. This is very patently indicated by the legislator in making use of the expression, "Any person who endangers public peace." The legislator says not any one who "disturbs," but any one who "endangers." If, in the contemplation of the law, any incitement whatever to hatred and contempt were punishable; if, in the contemplation of the law, the public peace were to be "endangered" through the mere incitement to such subjective sentiments; then the law would necessarily have said: any person who disturbs the public peace by inciting. If such had been the phrasing of the law, then it might perhaps be held that such disturbance always follows when instigation to hatred and contempt is made.
"Endanger" means to bring about the possibility of a disturbance, and by his choice of this term, therefore, the legislator has shown us that in speaking of the public peace he has not in mind a harmony of sentiments—which in the case contemplated must already have been disturbed, not simply endangered—but the peace of the streets. He has shown that he does not consider that a disturbance of the public peace necessarily has arisen in case of incitement to subjective sentiments of hatred and contempt. Consequently not every case of such incitement is held to be punishable, but only those cases in which the peace of the streets is in danger of being disturbed. In other words the penalty follows only when the incitement to hatred and contempt attains such a pitch as to become dangerous, that is to say, liable to result in overt unlawful acts. Section 100 is accordingly not to be taken to say that any person who incites to hatred and contempt endangers the public peace and is therefore subject to punishment. Such an interpretation would be wholly fallacious, on juridical as well as on grammatical grounds. Its meaning is that any person who puts the public peace in jeopardy through inciting to hatred and contempt—that is to say in case the incitement is of such a nature that it necessarily carries danger to the public peace—such a person is subject to the penalties of this law. In making use of the term "endanger," therefore, the law defines the crime of incitement to this effect, that it must be incitement of such a kind that it at least may lead to overt action—to the endangering of the peace of the streets—otherwise it is not punishable.
To show how far my action falls short of this third criterion, how little the alleged instigation is of the kind which might, even conceivably, lead to tangible action in the way of endangering the political peace, the peace of the public highways—to this end let me simply point out that in this address I am occupied with a discussion of periods of historical development of secular duration, and at the close I make the explicit statement that in the advance of a historical dawning one or two decades count but as a single hour in the revolution of a natural day.
So that we have here to do with an indictment which meets the requirements of the law at not a single point; whereas in order to an adequate charge, the several counts should concur, should combine and bear one another out.
It has frequently happened that indictments have been made in which some one count has not been well taken. But an indictment of which not even a single count proves to come within the contemplation of the law,—such an indictment deserves a special, and in every sense of the word a peculiar, place on honor in the temple of jurisprudence.
However, audiatur et altera pars.[58] Let us take one last look at the motivation which the indictment offers. In so doing it is possible that we shall find that in what I have been saying I have, by some highly ingenious artifice of exposition, succeeded in concealing the legally offensive features of my action; or on the other hand it may turn out that the totally nugatory character of this indictment will by this means be brought out in even more startling fashion than has yet appeared.
There is one sentence in this indictment which serves as underpinning to the whole structure. This sentence may, therefore, be expected to be of selected timber. The preamble of the document says: "The leading ideas of this address are as follows:—" and then, having given an ostensible resumé of these ideas, it goes on to the following effect: "By these expositions, and by the frequently recurring allusions to an imminent social revolution, the workingmen will manifestly be provoked to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie; that is to say, the unpropertied classes will be stirred up against the propertied, whereby the public peace will be endangered, particularly since the address contains a direct appeal to make the mastery of the working class over the other classes of society the end of their endeavors, to be pursued with the most ardent and consuming passion."
This is the only passage in the document that is of the nature of a legal motivation. Let us look more closely into this sentence. This is a sentence which might give the asthma to a person with weak lungs, and it is so constructed as to hide its total lack of substance from any superficial view under a shimmering verbiage and a confusion of ideas. If you will look more closely into this passage, Gentlemen, you will be astonished at the quantity of juristic monstrosities, absurdities, misstatements and misconstructions of fact which it contains.
Now, whereby, according to this passage, have I accomplished my alleged incitement to hatred and contempt? "By these expositions," says the document. That is to say by a purely theoretical, purely objective exposition of historical events; by what the indictment itself designates as the exposition of my leading ideas; by nothing else, therefore, than the scientific doctrine simply. It is by this means that I am alleged to have incited to hatred and contempt. The indictment may shift and turn as it likes; it cannot escape the avowal that its accusation runs against nothing else than purely scientific arguments,—against science and its teaching.
But the passage goes on to add an "and." By these expositions and by the frequently recurring allusions to an imminent social revolution is the instigation alleged to have been effected.
What are these allusions to an imminent social revolution? Where are they to be found? Why does not the public prosecutor cite them? I call upon him to do so. But he cannot cite them. There is no passage in this pamphlet which will bear out his insinuations on this point.
It is true, throughout this pamphlet I make frequent use of the words "revolutionary" and "revolution;" although I do not speak of an "imminent social revolution," as the public prosecutor alleges. What I speak of is a social revolution which supervened in February, 1848. But with this word, "revolution," the public prosecutor hopes to crush me. For he, taking the word in its narrower legal sense alone, cannot read this word, "revolution," without conjuring up before his fancy the brandishing of pitchforks. But such is not the meaning of the word in its scientific use, and the consistent use of the term in my pamphlet might have apprised the public prosecutor of the fact that the term is there employed in its alternative, scientific signification. So, for instance, I speak of the development of the territorial principality as a "revolutionary" phenomenon.
And so again, on the other hand, I expressly declare that the peasant wars, which, assuredly, were sufficiently garnished with violence and bloodshed,—I declare these wars to have been a movement which was revolutionary only in the imagination of those who participated in them, whereas they were in reality not a revolutionary, but a reactionary movement.
The progress of industry which took place in the sixteenth century, on the contrary, I repeatedly and constantly characterize as a "really and veritably revolutionary fact" (page 7), although no sword was drawn on its account. Likewise I characterize (page 7) the invention of the spinning jenny in 1775 as a radical and effectual revolution.
Is this an abuse of language, or am I hereby introducing a novel use of words in making use of the term "revolution" in this sense,—in that I apply it to peaceful developments and deny it to sanguinary disturbances!
The elder Schelling says (Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, Vol. VII, p. 351): "The happy thought of making freedom the all in all of Philosophy has not only made the human intellect free as regards its own motives and effected a greater change in this science in all directions than any earlier revolution," etc. The elder Schelling, at least, does not, like the public prosecutor's fancy, see pitchforks flashing before his eyes at the sound of the word "revolution." Applying the word, as he does, to the effects wrought by a philosophical principle, he takes it, as I do, in a sense which has no relation whatever to physical violence.
What, then, is the scientific meaning of this word "revolution," and how does revolution differ from reform? Revolution means transmutation, and a revolution is, accordingly, accomplished whenever, by whatever means, with or without shock or violence, an entirely new principle is substituted for what is already in effect. A reform, on the other hand, is effected in case the existing situation is maintained in point of principle, but with a more humane, more consequent or juster working out of this principle. Here, again, it is not a question of the means. A reform may be effected by means of insurrection and bloodshed, and a revolution may be carried out in piping times of peace. The peasant wars were an attempt at compelling a reform by force of arms. The development of industry was a full-blown revolution, accomplished in the most peaceable manner; for in this latter case an entirely new and novel principle was put in the place of the previously existing state of affairs. Both these ideas are developed at length and with great pains in the pamphlet under consideration.
How comes it that the public prosecutor alone has failed to understand me? Why is all this unintelligible to him alone, when every workingman understands it?
Now, even suppose that I had spoken of an "imminent social revolution," as in point of fact I did not; would I, therefore, necessarily have been talking of pitchforks and bayonets?
Professor Huber is a thoroughly conservative man, a strenuous royalist, a man who, on the adoption of the constitution of 1850, voluntarily resigned the professor's chair which he held in the University of Berlin, because, if I am rightly informed, he had scruples about subscribing to it; but at the same time he is a man who is with the deepest affection devoted to the welfare of the working classes, who has given the most painstaking study to their development and has written most excellent works upon that subject, particularly upon the history of industrial corporations or labor organizations. After having shown that the labor organizations of England, France, and Germany already have in hand a capital of fifty million thalers, Professor Huber says in this latest work (Concordia, p. 24):
"Under these circumstances and under the influences herein at work, and in view of the historical facts above indicated in outline, it is to be hoped that I need enter no disclaimer against Utopian daydreams of a universal millenium when I say that not only is a very substantial reform of the existing political conditions of the factory population practicable in such a measure as to bring about an elevation of their entire social and economic situation, but such a reform is to be looked for as in the natural course of things the assured outcome of the growth of labor organizations."
Here we have a prediction of a thoroughgoing social transmutation spoken of as the assured outcome of the labor-organization movement working out its effects simply within the lines of the peaceable and conventional course of things. But how if I, with all the stronger reason, had spoken of a prospective social change that might be expected to result from the combined force of the two factors, organized labor and universal suffrage?
But how can I be held accountable for the public prosecutor's literary limitations? for his lack of acquaintance with what is going on all around us in modern times and what science has already accepted and made a matter of record? Am I the scientific whipping-boy of the public prosecutor? If that were the case, the punishment which it would be for you, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, to mete out to me would be something stupendous. But all that apart, how can an allusion to an imminent social revolution, even to a pitchfork revolution, constitute an instigation to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie? And this is, after all, what the public prosecutor must be held to allege in the passage cited, and this in fact is what he does allege. Hatred and contempt can be aroused against any man only by his own acts and their publicity. But how can anything done by Peter excite the hatred and contempt of Paul? If any one were to tell us: "The workingmen are going to get up a social revolution," how could that remark arouse hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie? The passage in question, then, shows itself to have been one that makes no sense, either in point of grammar or in point of logic. It is not only untrue with a threefold untruth, but it is contradictory and meaningless. At least it is quite unintelligible to me.
I have as great difficulty in understanding the public prosecutor's language as he has in understanding mine. The Greeks were in the habit of calling any one barbaros (a barbarian) who did not understand the current speech. So the public prosecutor and I are both barbarians, the one to the other.
But this passage in the indictment which I have been analyzing brings up a third point at which I am alleged to have been guilty of inciting to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie. This is introduced with the word "particularly." The exposition and the allusions above spoken of are alleged to have incited to hatred and contempt, "particularly because the address contains a direct appeal to make the mastery of the working classes over the other classes of society the end of their endeavors, to be pursued with the most ardent and consuming passion." Suppose that such were the case; an exhortation addressed to a given class of society to pursue the vain ambition of a mastery over the other classes would be worthy of all reprobation, but it would still be legally permissible unless it urged to criminal acts. Every class in society is at liberty to strive for the control of the State, so long as it does not seek to realize its end by unlawful means. No political purpose is punishable, the means employed alone are. Now, the character of this prosecution, as a prosecution directed against a political bias, appears plainly and should be manifest to every one in every line of the indictment, in that it constantly charges incitement to the seeking of certain ends; it never attempts to show that criminal means have been employed, or that I have, in my address, urged the employment of such means. But even if I had been guilty of urging the working classes to resort to criminal means for gaining control over the other classes of society, then I could only have been indicted under Article 61,[59] or some other article of the criminal code, but never under Article 100, or as having offended against that article by an instigation of the workingmen to hatred and contempt; for such an exhortation addressed to the working classes to make themselves masters of the other classes of society must have incited the workingmen to political ambition, but by no means to hatred and contempt of any third party. This ambition on the part of the workingmen could, of course, not have been fathered upon the bourgeoisie; and since responsibility for it could not have been put upon them, hatred and contempt of them could not have been aroused by the fact of such an ambition. It therefore appears again that this passage is quite devoid of grammatical and logical content. But upon what ground has the public prosecutor read into my address an exhortation urging to the pursuit of "mastery on the part of the workingmen over the other classes of society?"
All that I have to say in my pamphlet bearing on this head is that it is the destiny of the historical epoch beginning with February, 1848, to install the ethical principle of the working classes as the dominant principle of society, to make it the guiding principle of the State; the nature of this principle is expounded in my pamphlet, and I have already restated it in outline in the introductory part of my speech.
I repeatedly and explicitly express myself to the same effect. So I say (page 31) that, as in 1789 the revolution was a revolution of the third estate, so in this later case it was a revolution of the fourth estate, "which now seeks to erect its principle into the dominant principle of society and to permeate all institutions with it." Or again
(page 32): "Whoever, therefore, appeals to the principle of the working class as the dominant principle of society;" and, further, on the same page: "We have now to examine, in three several hearings, this principle of the working class as the dominant principle of society." And (page 33): "Perhaps the idea of making the principle of the lowest class of society the dominant principle of the State and of society may seem to be a dangerous idea." I, then, proceed to develop, from page 39 onward, the difference between the ethical and political principle of the bourgeoisie and the ethical and political principle of the working class, and conclude on page 42 with the words: "This, then, is it, Gentlemen, that is to be characterized as the political principle of the working class," etc.
And because I present an exalted ethical principle, the noblest ethical principle which my intelligence is capable of grasping, the noblest ethical principle yet achieved by political philosophy, because I proclaim this as destined to become the guiding principle of the present period of history; because of this and because I bring evidence to show that this principle, as being the expression of the natural instinct due to the economic situation of the working classes, is properly to be designated as the principle of the working classes,—this is what the public prosecutor has construed into an atrocious crime, and has accused me of urging the working classes to aim at making their own class the masters of the other classes of society.
The public prosecutor appears to believe that I aspire to see the propertied classes reduced to servitude under the working classes, that I would invert history and make the landed gentry and the manufacturers the servants of the workingmen.
But however widely we may differ in the use of language, however much we may mutually be barbarians to one another, could such a misapprehension, or anything approaching it, be at all possible?
I develop (page 32) my view, explicitly and in detail, to the effect that this is precisely the characteristic mark of the fourth estate, that its principle contains no ground of discrimination, whether in point of fact or in point of law, such as could be erected into a domineering prerogative and applied to reconstruct the institutions of society to that end. The words I use are as follows (page 32): "Laborers we all are, in so far as we are willing to make ourselves useful to human society in any way whatever. This fourth estate, in the recesses of whose heart there lies no germ of a new and further development of privilege, is therefore a term coincident with the human race. Its concerns are, therefore, in truth the concerns of mankind as a whole; its freedom is the freedom of mankind itself; its sovereignty is the sovereignty of all men." And I thereupon go on to say: "Therefore, whoever appeals to the principle of the working class as the dominant principle of society, in the sense in which I have presented this idea,—his cry is not a cry designed to divide the classes of society," etc. And while I, with all my heart and soul, am making an appeal for the termination of all class rule and all class antagonism, the public prosecutor charges me with inciting the laborers to establish class rule over the propertied classes. I ask again: How is such an astonishing misunderstanding to be explained? Permit me once again, to quote the father against the son:
"The medium," says Schelling (Vol. I, p. 243, Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre)—"The medium whereby intellects understand one another is not the circumambient atmosphere, but the joint and common freedom whose movements penetrate to the innermost recesses of the soul. A human spirit not consciously replete with freedom is excluded from all spiritual communion, not only with others but even with himself. No wonder, therefore, that he remains incomprehensible to himself as well as to others, and wearies himself in his pitiable solitude with empty words which stir no friendly response whether in his own or in another's breast. To be unintelligible to such an unfortunate is a credit and an honor before God and man."
So says Schelling, the father.
Gentlemen, I have now reached the close of my argument. It were bootless to ask whether this charge could possibly have any weight with you, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court. But there was probably another design at the root of the prosecution. The political struggle between the bourgeoisie and the government has lately shown some slight signs of life. It has, not improbably, been thought that under these circumstances a prosecution for incitement of the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes would create an effective diversion; it was probably hoped that even if such an accusation were dismissed by you, still—you remember the ancient adage: calumniare audacter, semper aliquit haeret[60]—it would serve as a wet towel to bind about the slightly-inflamed countenance of our bourgeoisie,—and so, with this in view, Gentlemen, I was selected as the scapegoat to be driven out into the wilderness. But even this design, Gentlemen, will fail.
It will fail shamefully through the mere reading of my pamphlet, which I most particularly commend to the bourgeoisie. It will fail before the force of my own voice; and precisely with this in view I felt called on to go so extensively into the facts of the case in my defense. We are all, bourgeoisie and laborers, members of one people, and we stand firmly together against our oppressors.