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.
[Illustration: THE IRON FOUNDRY _From the Painting by Adolph von
Menzel_]
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_.)
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?