The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume X Part 27

But, more than this, a trusty councillor has been a.s.signed us, who is independent of our wills, and bears credentials from G.o.d Himself.

Conscience is an incorruptible and infallible judge, whom, if we will, we may hear p.r.o.nounce sentence every moment, and whose voice at last reaches even those who most obstinately refuse to listen.

The laws which human society has imposed upon itself can take account of actions only in their tribunals, and not of thoughts and feelings.

Even the various religions make different demands among the different peoples. Here they require the Sunday to be kept holy, here the Sat.u.r.day or Friday. One allows pleasures which another forbids. Even apart from these differences there is always a wide neutral ground between what is allowed and what is forbidden; and it is here that conscience, with her subtler discrimination, raises her voice. She tells us that _every_ day should be kept sacred to the Lord, that even permitted interest becomes unjust when exacted from the needy; in a word, she preaches morality in the bosom of Christian and Jew, of heathen and savage. For even among uncivilized races which have not the light of Christianity there is an agreement as to the fundamental conceptions of good and evil. They, too, recognize the breaking of promises, lying, treachery, and ingrat.i.tude as evil; they, too, hold as sacred the bond between parents, children, and kinsmen. It is hard to believe in the universal corruption of mankind, for, however obscured by savagery and superst.i.tion, there lies dormant in every human breast that feeling for the n.o.ble and the beautiful which is the seed of virtue, and a conscience which points out the right path. Can there be a more convincing proof of G.o.d's existence than this universal sense of right and wrong, this unanimous recognition of one law, alike in the physical and in the moral world, except that nature obeys this law with a full and absolute obedience, while man, who is free, has the power of violating it?

The body and the reason serve the ruling part of the soul, but they put forward claims of their own, they have their own share of power, and thus man's life is a perpetual conflict with self. If in this conflict the soul, hard-pressed from within and without, does not always end by obeying the voice of conscience, let us hope that He who created us imperfect will not require perfection from us.

For consider to what violent storms man is exposed in the voyage of life, what variety there is in his natural endowments, what incongruity between education and position in life. It is easy for the favorite of fortune to keep in the right path; temptation, at any rate to crime, hardly reaches him; how hard, on the other hand, is it for the hungry, the uneducated, the pa.s.sionate man to refrain from evil.

To all this due weight will be given in the last judgment, when guilt and innocence are put in the balance, and thus mercy will become justice, two conceptions which generally exclude one another.

It is harder to think of nothing than of something; when the something is once given, harder to imagine cessation than continuance. This earthly life cannot possibly be an end in itself. We did not ask for it; it was given to us, imposed upon us. We must be destined to something higher than a perpetual repet.i.tion of the sad experiences of this life. Shall those enigmas which surround us on all sides, and for a solution of which the best of mankind have sought their whole life long, never be made plain? What purpose is served by the thousand ties of love and friendship which bind past and present together, if there is no future, if death ends all?

But what can we take with us into the future?

The functions of our earthly garment, the body, have ceased; the matter composing it, which even during life was ever being changed, has entered into new chemical combinations, and the earth enters into possession of all that is her due. Not an atom is lost. Scripture promises us the resurrection of a glorified body, and indeed a separate existence without limitation in s.p.a.ce is unthinkable; yet it may be that this promise implies nothing more than the continued existence of the individual, as opposed to pantheism.

We may be allowed to hope that our reason, and with it all the knowledge that we have painfully acquired, will pa.s.s with us into eternity; perhaps, too, the remembrance of our earthly life. Whether that is really to be wished is another question. How if our whole life all our thoughts and actions should some day be spread out before us and we became our own judges, incorruptible and pitiless?

But, above all, the emotions must be retained by the soul, if it is to be immortal. Friendship does indeed rest on reciprocity, and is partly an affair of the reason; but love can exist though unreturned. Love is the purest, the most divine spark of our being.

Scripture bids us before all things love G.o.d, an invisible, incomprehensible Being, who sends us joy and happiness, but also privation and pain. How else can we love Him than by obeying His commandments, and loving our fellow-men, whom we see and understand?

When, as the Apostle Paul writes, faith is lost in knowledge, and hope in sight, and only love remains, then we hope, not without reason, to be a.s.sured of the love of our merciful Judge. COUNT MOLTKE.

Creisau, October, 1890.

THE LIFE AND WORK OF FERDINAND La.s.sALLE

By ARTHUR N. HOLCOMBE, Ph.D.

a.s.sistant Professor of Government, Harvard University

Ferdinand La.s.salle was born on April 11, 1825, at Breslau, of Jewish parents. The father, Hyman La.s.sal, was a prosperous business man, ambitious for his son, able to give him the best education the times afforded, and willing to let him choose his own career. The life of the La.s.sal family seems to have been like that of any well-to-do Jewish family in the kingdom of Prussia during the early nineteenth century. Of a quiet and peaceable behavior, they were devoted mainly to money-making and their domestic affairs.

The young La.s.salle gave early indications of his unusual character.

While still a boy in the local grammar school, his proud and independent disposition won him the displeasure of his teachers.

Especially the oppression of his own race filled his soul with wrath.

"O could I only give myself up to my boyish day-dreams," he wrote in his note-book at this time, "how I would put myself at the head of the Jews, weapons in hand, and make them independent!" Eventually he abandoned in disgust the attempt to gain a cla.s.sical education in the schools of his native city and entered the commercial high school in Leipzig. Here again his fiery temperament could not brook the restraints imposed upon him and he presently returned to his father's house.

The problem of a career was not easy to solve. The father's success enabled the son to choose his course in life without regard to financial considerations. Business and mere money-making were in fact distasteful to him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FERDINAND La.s.sALLE]

The learned professions were more to his liking. The father recommended medicine or the law, but the son aspired to some less hackneyed career. Jews were not then admitted to the service of the state in Prussia and the absence of popular inst.i.tutions of government rendered an independent political career for the time being out of the question. The son chose, therefore, to make his mark as a man of learning. He would be a great philosopher or scientist. Doubtless he kept in mind the possibility of engaging in journalism, should the times change, and becoming a tribune of the people. Such bold ideas are the birthright of all boys of spirit.

Ferdinand La.s.sale finished his education with his destiny consciously before him. He studied philology and philosophy at the universities of Breslau and Berlin and in the winter of 1845-46 made his first visit to Paris as a traveling scholar. Here he first adorned his family name with the final _le_, and here, also, he met the chief of the heroes of his youth, Heinrich Heine. Heine has given us a vivid pen-picture of La.s.salle, as he saw him in those student days. "My friend, Mr.

La.s.salle ... is a most highly gifted young man, uniting the widest knowledge with the greatest astuteness. I have been astounded at his energy of will, vigor of intellect, and promptness of action....

La.s.salle is a true child of modern times, wishing to know nothing of the humility and renunciation which have characterized our own lives.

This new race means to enjoy, to a.s.sert itself.... We were, however, perhaps happier in our idealism than these stern gladiators who go forth so proudly to mortal combats."

Returning to Berlin in the spring of 1846, La.s.salle signalized the attainment of his majority by espousing the cause of the Countess von Hatzfeld, then in the midst of her suits for divorce and for an accounting of her property. It was a characteristic act. The Countess'

troubles arose through no fault of his. He had little to gain by engaging in the affair and much to lose--not only time and money, but friends, reputation, and his very career. Yet he plunged into the thick of the fray and made the cause of the unhappy lady his own. For eight long years he fought her enemies from law-court to law-court, through thirty-six of them in all, to final victory. From it all he gained a good working knowledge of the law, a splendid training in forensic address, and a taste of the joys of combat against bitter odds. These things were later to stand him in good stead. But he had touched s.m.u.t and was himself besmirched.

Meanwhile the famous year, 1848, had come and gone. Men like La.s.salle are made for just such years. His friends all played their parts, each in his own way, in the struggle for German liberty and union. La.s.salle alone was absent from the field. He was defending himself against a charge of criminal conspiracy to commit larceny, an incident in the case of the Countess von Hatzfeld. He disposed of this charge in season to join the editors of the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_, and in the spring of 1849 he completed his apprenticeship as a revolutionist with a term in jail. At the expiration of his sentence he returned to the cause of the Countess, but he was required by the Prussian government to keep away from Berlin. Not until 1857, through the intervention of A. von Humboldt, did he receive permission to resume his residence in the capital. Then, with his friend, the Countess, he settled down once more to the realization of his youthful dreams, and the long-deferred career was taken up in earnest.

La.s.salle's career as a scholar and man of learning was short, but productive. It was opened in 1857 with the publication of his work, the _Philosophy of Herac.l.i.tus,_ projected more than ten years before, and it was concluded in 1861, as the event proved, by the publication of his _System of the Acquired Rights_. Midway between the two appeared a dramatic composition, _Franz von Sickingen,_ which served both as an intellectual diversion from the more serious studies in philosophy and law and as a personal confession of faith on the part of the author. None of these works can be p.r.o.nounced an unqualified success. The philosophy of Herac.l.i.tus was too obscure to exert any great influence upon contemporary thought, even when expounded by a La.s.salle, and the philosophy of La.s.salle himself was too closely modeled upon that of his master, Hegel, to obtain much notice on its own account. The treatise on the acquired rights of man was too technical to attract popular attention and too unorthodox to receive the general approval of professional students of the law. The _Franz von Sickingen_ was too deficient in dramatic action to be presented on the stage and too artificial in literary form to be read in the library. The three productions secured for La.s.salle a position among scholars but brought him no general recognition.

The three productions, however, pour a flood of light upon La.s.salle's own powerful personality. In the _Philosophy of Herac.l.i.tus_ he grappled with the most formidable philosophical problems and showed himself a master of the Hegelian dialectic.

In the _System of the Acquired Rights_ he attacked the very foundations of the current theories of law and justice with the same concentration of energy and purpose as had been displayed in the more practical problems of law and justice involved in the case of the Countess von Hatzfeld. But it is in _Franz von Sickingen_ that La.s.salle expressed his own nature most clearly and most completely.

Here indeed he speaks directly for himself through the lips of Ulrich von Hutten. Pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage springs from the soul of the living La.s.salle, the same La.s.salle that in his boyhood dreams would emanc.i.p.ate the Jews by force of arms, that in his early manhood so deeply impressed Heine, and that so shortly afterwards was ready to defy all the powers of the kingdom in defence of a friendless woman. The following speech of the legendary von Hutten is characteristic of the real La.s.salle:

"O worthy Sir! Think better of the sword!

A sword, when swung in freedom's sacred cause, Becomes the Holy Word, of which you preach, The G.o.d, incarnate in reality.

And all great things, which e'er will come to pa.s.s Will owe their final being to the sword."

In short, La.s.salle was not by nature a man of the study. He was a man of the battlefield.

The hour for battle was fast approaching. In 1859 the alliance of Napoleon the Third and Cavour against the Austrians was consummated and the war for the liberation and unification of Italy began. The hopes of all true Germans for the unification of the Fatherland took new life. Especially the survivors of '48 felt their pulses quicken.

In 1859 La.s.salle revealed his own interest in contemporary politics by the publication of his pamphlet on _The Italian War and the Duty of Prussia_, and in the following year by his address on _Fichte's Political Legacy and Our Own Times_. He also planned to establish a popular newspaper in Berlin, but the scheme was abandoned in 1861, on account of the refusal of the Prussian government to sanction the naturalization of the man whom La.s.salle desired for his a.s.sociate in the enterprise, Karl Marx. With the Prince of Prussia's accession to the throne and the brilliant successes of the Progressive party in the Prussian elections, men instinctively felt that the times were big with portentous events.

La.s.salle's political ideas were already well developed. He was born a democrat. In early nineteenth-century England the young Disraeli could hopefully plan a different course, but La.s.salle in Prussia could look for no public career as an aristocrat. Under the circ.u.mstances to be a democrat meant also to be a republican, and, if need be, a revolutionist. As a youth he drank deep from the idealistic springs that inspired the republican party throughout Germany. He admired Schiller and Fichte and, above all, Heine and Borne. La.s.salle indeed had drunk deeper than most of the revolutionists of '48. He was not only a democrat and a republican; he was also a socialist. Even before his first visit to Paris he had become acquainted with the writings of St. Simon, Fourier, and the utopian socialists in general. His mind was ripe for the doctrines of the _Communist Manifesto_, when that epoch-making doc.u.ment appeared, but he does not seem to have become personally acquainted with Marx until his connection with the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ in the fall of 1848. From that time on till the foundation of the _Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein_ La.s.salle stood closer to Marx than to any other one man.

La.s.salle's opportunity to turn definitely from scholarship to politics came in 1862 with the outbreak of the struggle over the Prussian const.i.tution. In a series of vigorous addresses (April, 1862, to February, 1863) he first criticised, then condemned, the Progressive party for its--as it seemed to him--pusillanimous policy. But La.s.salle was not content merely to criticise and condemn. His restless energy found no adequate expression short of the creation of a new party of his own. His repudiation of the Progressives, however, was not dictated by differences over tactics alone. He rejected the fundamental principles of the liberal movement in German politics. He saw around him the evidences of deep and widespread poverty. The great problem of the day to his mind was not the political problem of a proper const.i.tution of government, but the social problem of a proper distribution of wealth. The need, as he saw it, was not for parchment-guarantees of individual liberty. It was for practical promotion of social welfare. Hence, at the same time that he opened fire upon the tactics of the Progressives, he unfolded his plans for the constructive treatment of the social, as distinct from the political, problem.

The nature of La.s.salle's social ideal and the character of the means by which he sought to justify it are for the first time systematically set forth in his address (April 12, 1862) "upon the special connection between modern times and the idea of a laboring cla.s.s," subsequently published under the t.i.tle, _The Workingmen's Programme_. This address was the point of departure for the socialist movement in Germany, as the _Communist Manifesto_ of Marx and Engels was that of international socialism. It was indeed largely inspired by the spirit of that revolutionary doc.u.ment. During the two and a half years which followed the publication of this address, La.s.salle often set forth his fundamental social philosophy with extraordinary clearness and force, but he never surpa.s.sed his opening salutation to the workingmen of Germany. It has been read by hundreds of thousands.

It was his masterpiece.

_The Workingmen's Programme_ attracted the immediate attention of the Prussian government. The police took offence at the tone of the address and brought against its author a charge of criminal incitement of the poor to hatred and contempt of the rich. On January 16, 1863, La.s.salle appeared in court and defended himself against this charge in an almost equally celebrated address, published under the t.i.tle, _Science and the Workingmen_. Here La.s.salle speaks in a different but no less brilliant vein. From that time forth La.s.salle's appearances before audiences of workingmen quite generally led to corresponding appearances before audiences of judges. If one court set him free, he was liable to be haled before another court for defamation of the prosecuting attorney in the court of first resort. But the prisoner's dock served as well as the orator's platform for the purposes of his agitation.

_The Workingmen's Programme_ attracted less immediate attention from the workingmen themselves. But among the few whose attention was attracted was a group of Leipzig labor leaders who invited La.s.salle to advise them more fully concerning his plans for the formation of an independent labor party. La.s.salle's reply to this invitation was the _Open Letter to the Committee for the Calling_ _of a General Convention of German Workingmen at Leipzig_, dated March 1, 1863. This letter sets forth the platform upon which La.s.salle proposed to make his appeal for the support of the working cla.s.ses. The two main planks of the platform were the demands for manhood suffrage and for the establishment of cooperative factories and workshops with the aid of subventions from the State. Through manhood suffrage La.s.salle expected that the working cla.s.ses would immediately become the dominant power in the State, and through State-aided producers' a.s.sociations he expected that the cooperative commonwealth would eventually come into being. Manhood suffrage was thus the fundamental political condition of Social Democracy. State-aided producers' a.s.sociations were but a temporary economic expedient. Upon this basis, May 23, 1863, the General a.s.sociation of German Workingmen (_Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein_) was founded.

The immediate results of the foundation of the General a.s.sociation of German Workingmen were much less than La.s.salle had antic.i.p.ated. He had hoped that it would quickly surpa.s.s the Liberal National a.s.sociation, founded by the leaders of the Progressive party in 1859, which at this time counted about 25,000 members. In fact, during La.s.salle's life the Workingmen's a.s.sociation never reached one-fifth of that number. The workingmen generally were slow to recognize either the character of La.s.salle's purposes or the character of the man himself. Despite the power and brilliancy of the speech-making campaign upon which La.s.salle promptly entered he made little headway. The progress of the movement among the rank and file, however, was more satisfactory than in any other quarter. Marx had been lost to the movement before it was inaugurated and the rigid Marxians among the German socialists continued to hold aloof. La.s.salle's close personal friend, Lothar Bucher, could see no prospect of early success and withdrew while there was still time. The independent socialist, Rodbertus, to whom La.s.salle next turned for a.s.sistance, had little faith in manhood suffrage and none at all in State-aided producers' a.s.sociations. To confirm his unbelief in manhood suffrage he pointed to the ease with which a popular plebiscite could be manipulated by a Louis Napoleon.

State-aided producers' a.s.sociations, he declared to be incompatible with scientific socialism, a dangerous compromise between the national workshops advocated by the utopian socialist, Louis Blanc, and the cooperative corporations, advocated by the anarchist, Prudhomme. So La.s.salle found himself alone at the head of his new independent labor party.

It was not the workingmen but the middle-cla.s.s Progressive party that was most aroused by La.s.salle's _Open Letter._ He was regarded as a traitor to the cause of the const.i.tution and a practical ally of the forces of reaction--in short, as either a fool or a knave. La.s.salle saw clearly enough that he could not succeed without making clear to his prospective followers the irreconcilability of liberalism and socialism, and directed his most powerful efforts against the position of the Progressive party. His _Workingmen's Reader_ (May, 1863) and _Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch_ (January, 1864) are conspicuous memorials of his campaign against liberalism. The liberal position was substantially that the workingmen, though without effective voting-power, were honorary members of the Progressive party, and hence needed no independent party of their own, and that, for the rest, they could best promote their special economic interests by "self-help," that is, through voluntary and una.s.sisted cooperation.

Liberal leaders, especially Schulze-Delitzsch, labored strenuously to improve the well-being of the working-cla.s.ses along these lines, and their efforts were not in vain. The Progressive watchword, "right makes might," sophistical as it seemed to La.s.salle, appealed to the idealism of the German people, and the party was in the heyday of its success. More and more La.s.salle found himself forced by the necessities of his struggle with the Progressives into compromising relations with the government of Bismarck. His last great speech delivered at Ronsdorf on the first anniversary of the foundation of the Workingmen's a.s.sociation betrays the dilemma into which he had fallen. Under the conditions of the time there was not enough room between the contending forces of progress and reaction for the great independent labor party which La.s.salle had hoped to create. There was room for a humble beginning, but that was all.

It is not necessary to dwell on the details of La.s.salle's last twelve months and tragic end. The story is brief: a year of exhausting toil and small result, then a short vacation, an unfortunate love-affair, a foolish challenge to a duel, a single pistol-shot, and three days later, August 31, 1864, the end. Thus he died, and on his tomb in Breslau was written: "Here lies what was mortal of Ferdinand La.s.salle, the Thinker and Fighter."

The name of La.s.salle is most frequently connected with that of Marx.

Certainly the two had much in common. They worked together in 1848 and would have done so again in 1862 if La.s.salle had had his way. For fourteen years they were personal friends. Though they ultimately drifted apart, they never became enemies. La.s.salle was seven years younger than Marx and was unquestionably strongly influenced by the ideas of the founder of scientific socialism. At the same time he was a man who did his own thinking, and his speeches and writings, even those dealing most particularly with the philosophy of socialism, are by no means mere paraphrases of Marx. His ideas betray resemblances to those of various contemporary writers on socialism and the socialist movement, notably Lorenz von Stein, the author of the _History of the Social Movements in France from 1789_. The economic interpretation of history, set forth in the _Workingmen's Programme_, however, is in many respects but an amplification of the economic interpretation of history originally and more briefly set forth in the _Communist Manifesto_. The theory of economics in general and of wages in particular, contained in the _Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch_, is substantially the same as that contained in Marx's _Critique of Political Economy,_ published in 1859. Regarded solely as a theoretical socialist, La.s.salle is rightly cla.s.sed among the Marxians.