The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume X Part 32

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

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

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE IRON FOUNDRY _From the Painting by Adolph von Menzel_]

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

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

If you will read this voluminous _remonstrance_, Gentlemen--you may find it in the annals of that time by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (liv.

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Wolf, at Halle, popularized the Leibnizian philosophy, and it was then brought to the notice of the soldier-king, Frederick William I., that, according to Wolf's teaching of preestablished harmony, deserting soldiers did not desert by their own free will but by force of this peculiar divine arrangement of a preestablished harmony;[50] wherefore this doctrine, being spread abroad among the military, could not but be very detrimental to the maintenance of military discipline. It is true, this soldier-king, whose regiments were his State, was incensed at all this in the highest degree, and that he forthwith, in November, 1723, issued an order-in-council against Wolf, ordering him on penalty of the halter, to leave Prussian ground within twice twenty-four hours--and Wolf was obliged to flee.

But, inasmuch as the king's _lettres de cachet_ in that time permitted no appeal, they are also pa.s.sed over in history as being devoid of interest or historic significance. It may be added that the soldier-king had simply perpetrated a gratuitous outrage, and had not set the claims of law and right aside. He threatened to hang Wolf, and this threat he could have carried out with the help of his soldiers.

Even brute force is not devoid of dignity when it acts openly and above-board. He did not insult his courts by asking them to condemn scientific teaching. It did not occur to him to disguise his act of violence under the forms of law.

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

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

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

For many decades before the days of the Const.i.tution the unquestioned liberty of science on Prussian ground had served the antagonists of Prussia as their supreme recourse, their chief boast and proudest ornament. You will remember the extraordinary sensation created by the case of Bruno Bauer, the Privat Docent on the theological faculty at Bonn, whom it was attempted to deprive of his _licentia docendi_[51] at the ominous instance of the absolutist-pietistical Eichhorn ministry, because of his peculiar doctrine concerning the gospel. This was the first case during the present century in which an a.s.sault has been attempted upon the freedom of scientific teaching, and even this was an infinitely less heinous one than the present. The faculties of the university were deeply stirred, and for months together official p.r.o.nunciamentos swarmed about the town; men of the highest standing, such as Marheinecke and others, declared that protestantism and enlightenment were threatened in their very foundations in case such usurpation, hitherto unheard of in Prussia, were allowed to take its course. And even such expressions of opinion as reached a conclusion subservient to the ministerial view based their conclusion on the ground that the case in question concerned a _licentia docendi_ in the theological faculty, with the fundamental principles of which Bauer's doctrines were incompatible. They took care expressly to declare that had the question concerned a _licentia docendi_ in any one of the nontheological faculties, in a philosophical faculty, e.g., the decision must necessarily have been reversed.

No one, not even Eichhorn himself, harbored the conceit that this doctrine and its teaching was to be dealt with by the criminal court. A teacher who spread abroad scientific teachings subversive of theological doctrines was deprived of the opportunity to proclaim his teaching from a theological chair; but to call in the jailer to suppress him--to that depth of subservience to absolutism had no one at that time descended.

Alas, that Eichhorn, the much berated, could not have lived to see this day! With what admiration and with what gratification would he have looked upon his "const.i.tutional" successors!

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

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

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

Scientific theory must be free even to the length of license.

For, even if we could speak of a license in science and its teaching,--which, by the way, is most seriously to be questioned,--this is by all means a point at which an attempt to guard against abuse in one case would be liable in a million instances to put a check upon the blessings of rightful use. If any given measures of state, or any given cla.s.s inst.i.tutions, were shielded from scientific discussion, so that science might not teach that the arrangements in question are inadequate or detrimental, iniquitous or destructive,--under these circ.u.mstances, what genius could there be of such comprehensive reach, so far overtopping the spiritual level of all his contemporaries and all succeeding generations, as even to surmise the total extent of the loss which would thereby be sustained?

What fruitful discoveries and developments, what growth of spiritual power and insight would be stifled in the germ by one such rigid interdict upon abuse; and what violent convulsions and what decay might not come upon the State in consequence of it?

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

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

In point of fact, there has. .h.i.therto been not an attempt, since the adoption of the const.i.tution, to bring an indictment against any given scientific teaching.

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

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

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

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

But that was two years ago.

In return for the accusation which has been brought against me, I, in my turn, retort with the accusation that my accusers have this day brought upon Prussia the disgrace that now for the first time since the State came into existence scientific teaching is prosecuted before a criminal court. For what can the public prosecutor say to my accusation, since he concedes the substance of my claims, since he is compelled to acknowledge that science and its teaching is free, and therefore free from all penal restraint? Will he contend, perhaps, that I do not represent science? Or will he, possibly, deny that the work with which this indictment is concerned is a scientific work?

The prosecutor seems to feel himself hampered by the fact that he has here to do with a scientific production, for he begins his indictment with the sentence: "While the accused has a.s.sumed an appearance of scientific inquiry, his discussion at all points is of a practical bearing." The appearance of scientific inquiry? And why is it the appearance only? I call upon the prosecutor to show why only the appearance of scientific inquiry is to be imputed to this scientific publication. I believe that in a question as to what is scientific and what not, I am more competent to speak than the public prosecutor.

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

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

I beg you, therefore, to take a look at the contents of this pamphlet.

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

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

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

And I beg you, Gentlemen, to take note with what a strict scientific objectivity of treatment, how free from all propagandist bias, I proceed with the discussion. If there is any one datum which lends itself to the purposes of that propagandist bias which the public prosecutor claims to find in this pamphlet--namely the incitement of the indigent cla.s.ses to hatred of the wealthy--it is the peasant wars.

If there is any one fact which has. .h.i.therto been accepted, in scientific and in popular opinion alike, and more particularly among the unpropertied cla.s.ses, with, the fondest remembrance, as a national movement iniquitously put down by the strong hand of violence, it is the peasant wars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this second period, which has completed its three hundred and fifty years, as I further go on to show, is now essentially concluded.

With the French Revolution of 1848 comes the dawning of a new, a third historical period. By its proclamation of universal and equal suffrage, regardless of property qualifications, this third period a.s.signs to each and every one an equal share in the sovereignty, in the guidance of public affairs and public policy. And so it installs free labor as the dominating principle of social life, conditioned by neither the possession of land nor of capital.

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