Chapter XVII: Part 17

In fact, with the consistency which all principles have, this one was soon forced to develop into a different quantitative scope. In the constitution of 1814, according to the classified list promulgated by Louis XVIII., a direct tax of three hundred francs (eighty thalers) was established, in place of the value of three days' work, as a condition of the franchise. The July Revolution of 1830 broke out, and nevertheless, by the law of April 19, 1831, a direct tax of two hundred francs (about fifty-three thalers) was required as a condition of the franchise.

What under Louis Philippe and Guizot was called the _pays légal_--that is, the country as a legal entity--consisted of 200,000 men; for there were not more than 200,000 electors in France who could meet the property requirement, and these exercised sovereignty over more than 30,000,000 inhabitants. It is here to be noted that it makes no difference whether the principle of property qualification, the exclusion of those without property from the franchise, appears, as in the constitutions referred to, in direct and open form, or in a form in one way or another disguised. The effect is always the same.

So the second French Republic in 1850 could not possibly revoke the general direct franchise, once proclaimed, which we shall later consider, but adopted the expedient of granting the franchise (law of May 31,1850) only to such citizens as had been domiciled in a place without interruption for at least three years. For, because workingmen in France are frequently compelled by conditions to change their domicile and to look for work in another commune, it was hoped, and with good reason, that extremely large numbers of workingmen, who could not bring proof of three years uninterrupted residence in the same place, would be excluded from the franchise.

Here you have a property qualification in disguised form. It is still worse in our country, since the promulgation of the three-class election law, under which, with variations according to locality, three, ten, thirty, or more voters without property, of the third class of electors, have only the same franchise as one single capitalist who belongs to the first class; so that, in fact, if the proportion were only one to ten, nine men out of every ten who had the franchise in 1848 have lost it through the three-class election law of 1849, and exercise it only in appearance.[48]

But this is only the average situation. In reality, conditions vary greatly in different localities, and they are often still more unfavorable, most unfavorable in fact where the inequality of property is most developed; thus for instance, in Düsseldorf twenty-six voters of the third class have no more power than one rich man.

If we return from this discussion to our main thought, we have shown, and shall continue to show, in what manner, since the time when, through the French Revolution, the capitalist element obtained sovereignty, its principle, the possession of capital, has now become the controlling principle of all social institutions; how the capitalist class, proceeding in just the same manner as the nobility in the Middle Ages with land ownership, impresses now the controlling and exclusive stamp of its particular principle, the possession of capital, upon all institutions of society. The parallel between the nobility and the capitalist class is, in this respect, complete. We have already seen this with regard to the most important fundamental point, the constitution of the Empire. As in the Middle Ages landholding was the prevailing principle of representation in the German parliaments, so now, by a direct or disguised property qualification, the amount of tax, and therefore, since this is determined by the capital of an individual, the holding of capital, is what, in the last instance, determines the right of election to legislative bodies and therefore of participation in the control of the State.

Just so in reference to all other institutions in which I have demonstrated to you that land ownership was the controlling principle in the Middle Ages. I called your attention then to the exemption from taxation of the noble landholders of the Middle Ages, and told you that every privileged ruling class tries to throw the burden for the maintenance of public welfare upon the oppressed propertyless class. Just so the capitalists. To be sure they cannot declare publicly that they wish to be exempt from taxation. Their expressed principle is rather the rule that everybody shall be taxed in proportion to income; but, on the other hand, they attain, at least fairly well, the same result in disguised form by the distinction between direct and indirect taxes.

Direct taxes are those which, like the classified income tax, are collected, and therefore are determined, according to the amount of income and capital. Indirect taxes, however, are those which are laid upon any necessity--for instance, salt, grain, beer, meat, fuel; or on the necessity for legal protection--law costs, stamp taxes, etc., and which the individual very frequently pays in the price of the commodity without knowing or perceiving that he is being taxed, that the tax increases the price.

Now no man, of course, who is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as rich as another eats by any means twenty, fifty or a hundred times as much salt, or bread, or meat; or drinks fifty or a hundred times as much beer or wine; or has fifty or a hundred times as much need for heat, and therefore for fuel, as the workingman or the relatively poor man.

The result of this is that all indirect taxes, instead of falling upon individuals according to the proportion of their capital and income, are paid in the main by the propertyless classes, the poorer classes of the nation. It is true that the capitalists did not invent indirect taxes--they were already in existence--but they were the first to develop them into a monstrous system and to throw upon them nearly the whole cost of government. To make this clear to you, I will simply allude to the Prussian financial administration of 1855. (Shows by official statistics that out of a budget of 109,000,000 thalers all but 12,800,000 were derived from indirect taxes.)

Indirect taxation is therefore the institution through which the capitalistic class obtains the privilege of exemption for its capital and lays the cost of the government upon the poorer classes of society.

Observe, at the same time, Gentlemen, the peculiar contradiction and the strange kind of justice of the procedure of laying the whole expense upon indirect taxation, and therefore upon the poor people, and of setting up as a test and a condition of the franchise, and therefore of political control, the direct taxes, which contribute for the total need of the State only the insignificant sum of twelve million out of one hundred and eight million.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

* * * * *

SCIENCE AND THE WORKINGMEN (1863)

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

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

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, on the other hand, Gentlemen, in February, 1412, the University of Paris, which was in no way intrusted with an oversight or a control of this country's fiscal affairs, took occasion to address a memorial to the King of France, Charles VI., as it said: "_pour la chose publique du votre royaume_"--on the public concerns of the realm. And in this memorial the university subjects the fiscal administration of the country, together with other branches of the administration, to a drastic criticism, and passes a verdict of unqualified condemnation upon it. This _rémonstrance_ 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 employées à choses dessus dictes_," etc.--and it closes this its review with the peremptory demand: "_Item, et il fault savoir, où 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 gouverné, autrement que maintenant_"--"when the country was well governed, as is not the case today." The _rémonstrance_ 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 _rémonstrance_ closes with the declaration that all this, which it has set forth is, in spite of its length, but a very adequate presentation of the matter, in so much that it would require several days to describe all the misgovernment the country suffered.

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

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

If you will read this voluminous _rémonstrance_, 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. Douët 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, lèse majesté, incitement of the subjects of the State to hatred and disrespect--and, indeed, I know not what all would be the offenses which our prosecutors would have discovered in the document. It is less than a year since, according to the newspapers, a disciplinary inquiry was instituted with respect to a memorial of a very different tenor, wherein one of our universities declined the mandatory suggestions addressed to the university by the ministers in regard to a given appointment. But, at that earlier day, in the dark ages, such was not the custom. On the other hand, in compliance with the university's demands, the treasurer of the crown, Audry Griffart, together with many others of the high officers of finance, was taken into custody, while others avoided a like fate only by escaping into a church vested with the right of asylum.

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

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