there be an intention to incite to hatred and contempt. A contingent
incitement to hatred and contempt, an incitement by inadvertence, is
in this case not conceivable. If such a contingent incitement, an
unintended incitement to hatred and contempt, were conceivable, what
would not the consequences be? We have, all of us, for instance,
recently read certain speeches delivered in the upper house, which
have, we will say, filled me,--and not me alone, Gentlemen, but along
with me a very large part of the nation--with hatred and contempt to
the point of distraction. Does it follow that the public prosecutor
could take action against the speakers in question? He is not
competent to do so, even aside from the political prerogative of the
speakers, for, although such has been the effect of these speeches,
the purpose of these gentlemen was assuredly not to stir up hatred and
contempt. But it is equally true that no one can deny that the purpose
of my address was to impart knowledge. The most that the public
prosecutor can allege is that it was a matter of indifference to me if
the knowledge imparted stirred up hatred and contempt,--an allegation
without significance, since there is no such thing as an incitement to
hatred and contempt by inadvertence.
But, in point of fact, a deliberate incitement of this kind is in the
present case absolutely excluded for another reason, which at the same
time establishes that the address in question could not even have had
the effect of stirring up hatred and contempt. I, therefore, in order
to prevent repetition, beg to present this reason in connection with
the second, viz.: that my address could not have the effect of causing
hatred and contempt.
I have, therefore, to say, as the second count under this head, that
this address cannot possibly have had the effect of stirring up hatred
and contempt, and _a fortiori_ cannot have had that intention.
On what grounds alone can hatred and contempt be deserved?
On the ground of viciousness, which in turn is an attribute of
voluntary human actions alone. But in this address of mine, I show
that the dominance of this principle of the bourgeoisie, against which
I am by the public prosecutor accused of inciting to hatred and
contempt, is but a stage of economic and ethical development, which is
the outcome of historical necessity, and that its nonexistence is an
utter impossibility and that it therefore has all the character of
natural necessity that belongs to the developmental progress of the
earth.
Do we hate Nature because we have to struggle with her? Because we
have to strive to guide her processes and improve her products?
But there is the further question: How has the public prosecutor
understood my pamphlet?
The fundamental idea of my address is that the dominance of the
bourgeoisie has in no wise been produced, consciously and by their own
motion, intentionally and in a responsible manner, by the propertied
class as persons or individuals. On the contrary, the bourgeois are
but the unconscious, choiceless, and therefore irresponsible products,
not the producers of the situation as it stands and as it has
developed under the guidance of quite other laws than the direction of
personal choice. Even their reluctance to surrender this their mastery
I refer back to the laws of human nature, whose character it is to
hold fast to whatever is and to account it necessary. But a doctrine
which goes the length of denying the propertied class all
responsibility for the existing state of things, which makes them a
product instead of the producers of this state of things--this
doctrine the public prosecutor construes to have incited to hatred and
contempt of these persons.
For, be it noted, we have here to do with persons and classes of
persons, under section 100, not with institutions established by the
State, as under section 101.
No workingman has got so faulty an understanding of my address as the
public prosecutor, and I leave it to him to say whether this is due to
his lack of understanding or to his lack of will to understand.
But, more than all this, I go on to show that the dominance of the
idea of the bourgeoisie is a great historic move in the liberation of
humanity; that it was a most potent moral cultural advance; that in
fact it was the historically indispensable prerequisite and
transitional stage through development out of which the idea of the
working class was to emerge.
I therefore must be said to reconcile the working class to the
dominance of the bourgeoisie as an historical fact by showing the
logical necessity of this dominance. I reconcile them to it, for a
comprehension of the rationality of what restricts us is the fullest
possible reconciliation to it.
And if I proceed, further, to show that the idea of the bourgeoisie is
not the highest stage of the historical development, not the perfect
flower of advancing improvement, but that beyond it lies yet a higher
manifestation of the human spirit, and that this ulterior phase rests
on the former as its base--does this mean that I incite to hatred and
contempt of the former?
The working class might as well hate and despise themselves and all
human nature, whether in their own or in their neighbors' persons,
because it is the law of human nature to unfold step by step and to
proceed to each succeeding stage of development from the indispensable
vantage ground of the phase preceding.
If I had any predilection for homiletical discourse, Gentlemen, I
should be quite justified in saying that I have exhorted the working
classes to a filial piety toward the bourgeoisie, in that I have shown
that the dominance of the bourgeoisie was the indispensable
prerequisite and condition by transition out of which alone the idea
of the working class could come forth. For even if the son, by grace
of a freer and fuller education and a larger endowment of personal
force, strives to place himself above the level on which his father
stood, still he never forgets the source of his own blood and the
author of his own being. How deep in the mud is it the intention to
thrust the noblest of all the sciences in bringing this charge of
criminal instigation against the doctrine that history is an unfolding
evolution of reason and human liberty?
It was for long incomprehensible to me how the public prosecutor could
use such words as instigation to hatred and contempt in this
connection. In the end I have been able to explain this fact to myself
only on this one supposition. The public prosecutor must have
endeavored in reading this address, to put himself in the place of a
working man and has then come to feel that he would in such a case be
moved to hatred.
The public prosecutor, then, is sensible that he would hate.
Now, Gentlemen, I might say that this would be attributable to the
peculiarity of his temperament, and that he had no call to generalize
and go beyond that. But I will lend a hand to the public prosecutor in
this perplexity. I will bring the charge against myself in a more
telling form than he has been able to do. I will formulate it as the
facts of the case require that it must be formulated if it is to be
preferred at all. And in so doing, the more pointedly I may be able to
bring to light the essential nature of the charge, the more utterly
shall I annihilate it.
This is what the public prosecutor should have said:
It is true this address held by Lassalle appeals to the intellect of
the auditors, not to their practical impulses or their emotions. It is
accordingly true also that this address does not come within the
sphere of competence of the penal code.
But in a person endowed with the normal complement of human
sensibility, cognition, will and emotion are not so many insulated
pigeonholes which stand in no relation to one another. Whenever the
one compartment is full it flows over into the next. Will and emotion
are servants of the intellect and are controlled by it.
Lassalle, it is true, has not a word to say of hatred and contempt; he
is simply occupied with a theoretical exposition of how certain
arrangements, for instance, the three-class suffrage, is pernicious. I
am unable to confute this teaching. But I have this to say with
respect to the organic unity of human nature, that if the doctrine is
true then it follows that every normally constituted working man must
come to hate and distrust not only these arrangements and institutions
but also those who profit by them.
Such is the logical framework on which this indictment must proceed.
This is the line of argument which avowedly or not, by logical
necessity comes to expression in this indictment.
It is not I, but the public prosecutor speaking from the eminence of
his curule chair, who proclaims to the working classes the awful
doctrine: You must hate and distrust.
It is not for me, it is for the public prosecutor to square himself
with the bourgeoisie.
But what is my answer to the public prosecutor and his indictment
which charges me with his own offense?
My answer is a four-fold one:
In the first place a full recognition of the inadequacy or the
viciousness of a given institution must arouse in any person of normal
sensibility an enduring purpose to change such an institution, if
possible, and the arousing of such an undying purpose in my hearers
has necessarily been the aim of my scientific investigation, as it
necessarily is the end of all scientific work. But such a purpose, so
long as it does not utter itself in an illegal manner, is absolutely
unconstrained by law. The like is true of all effort to arouse such a
purpose, so long as it does not resort to illegal means. But such a
purpose to amend the shortcomings of any established arrangement, is
by no means the same thing as hatred and contempt of the arrangement
in question; since these shortcomings are a matter of historical
growth, of historical necessity; since, indeed, they may even be, in
effect, a factor in the work of liberation, and a factor of the
gravest consequence and of the most beneficial effect for cultural
growth. Further reasons to the like effect have already been recited
and I will not take up your time with their repetition and further
development. Here, then, is the first hiatus in the public
prosecutor's argument.
In the second place, if it actually follows in any given case that
hatred and contempt is, for a normally constituted human being, the
necessary consequence of a scientific knowledge of the facts, such
hatred and contempt could by no means be laid under penalties by the
legislator.
Whatever institution is so vicious that knowledge of it necessarily
excites hatred and contempt, that institution should be hated and
despised.
The legislator lays penalties upon such hatred and contempt as are but
the effects produced by blind emotions and passions. But he has not
imposed penalties upon human reason and the moral constitution of man.
He consequently does not impose penalties upon hatred and contempt
which are the necessary outcome of these two features of human nature.
The public prosecutor construes section 100 to the effect that the
legislator has therein intended to prohibit the use of reason and
proscribe the moral nature of man. But such a purpose has not entered
the thoughts of the law-giver. No court will put such a construction
upon the law as to make the legislator the avowed enemy of
intelligence and science,--and here come into bearing again all the
arguments of my defense directed to Article 20 of the Constitution.
The only meaning of these arguments in this connection is that even if
science and its teaching were not by Article 20 of the Constitution
exempt from the application of the criminal code, still section 100,
except it be construed to intend the utter destruction of human
nature, cannot be leveled against such hatred and contempt as is the
necessary outcome of scientific knowledge.
In the third place, hatred and contempt of a given institutional
arrangement or expedient is by no means the same thing as hatred and
contempt of those persons who profit by the arrangement in question;
whereas section 100 deals only with hatred of persons,--so that we
have here the third break in the public prosecutor's argument, and it
is a veritable _saltomortale_.
In the fourth place I have to present an argument of fact. The
prosecutor's argument presents the most remarkable _quid pro quo_[56]
that has ever come to light in a legal discussion. The point which I
here touch upon constitutes the transition to the second part of my
argument, showing that all proof touching the second condition to be
fulfilled by the indictment is wanting; viz.: that even if there were
ground for speaking of hatred and contempt in this connection, it is
still quite plain that there has been no instigation to hatred or
contempt of those against whom I am charged with having incited to
hatred and contempt.
As to this second part of the indictment: I am accused of instigating
the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied
classes.
"By this presentation," says the indictment, "working men will plainly
be incited to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie, that is to say,
the unpropertied classes will be inflamed against the propertied
classes." And after having in this way, quietly and by subreption,
introduced this its definition of the term "_bourgeoisie_," the
indictment goes on to formulate its final charge as follows:
"It is accordingly charged that the above named citizen, F.L., (1),
by his lecture etc., and (2) by publishing the pamphlet containing
this same lecture, has publicly instigated the unpropertied classes
of the State's subjects to hatred and contempt of the propertied
classes."
It is true, in my address I speak of the "_bourgeoisie_." But what is
my definition of this term? It will be sufficient to cite a single
passage which contains the definition of "_bourgeoisie_" as used by me
in this pamphlet. This will show what an incomprehensible, unheard-of,
uncharacterisable _quid pro quo_ the public prosecutor has attempted
to impute to me in charging me with instigating the unpropertied
classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes.
On page 20 of this pamphlet is the following passage, quoted
literally:
"I have now reached the point, Gentlemen, where it becomes necessary
that, in order to avoid a possible gross misapprehension of what I
have to say, I explain what I mean by the term 'bourgeoisie' or 'great
bourgeoisie,' as the designation of a political party--that I define
what the word 'bourgeoisie' means in my use of it.
"The word 'bourgeoisie' might be translated into German by the term
_Bürgertum_ (citizenship, or the body of citizens). But that is not the
meaning actually attached to the word. We are all citizens--workingmen,
petty burghers, commercial aristocracy and all the rest alike. On the
other hand the word 'bourgeoisie' has, in the course of historical
development, come to designate a particular political bias and
movement which I will now go on to characterize.
"At the time of the French Revolution, and, indeed, even yet, that entire
body of subjects which is not of noble birth, was roughly divided into
two sub-classes: First the class comprising those persons who, wholly or
chiefly, get their income from their own labor and are without capital,
or are, at the most, possessed of but a moderate capital which affords
them the means of carrying on some employment from which they and their
families derive their subsistence. This class comprises the
workingmen, the lower middle classes (_Kleinbürger_), the citizen
class and also the body of the peasants. The second class is made up
of those persons who have the disposal of a large property, of a large
capital, and who are producers or receivers of income on the basis of
their possession of capital. These latter might be called the great
burghers or commoners, or the capitalist gentry. But such a great
burgher or capitalist gentleman, is not by reason of that fact a
bourgeois. No commoner has any objection to raise because a nobleman
in the bosom of his family finds comfort in his pedigree and in his
lands. But when, on the other hand, this nobleman insists on making
such pedigree or such landed property the basis of a peculiar
importance and prerogative in the State, when he insists on making
them a ground for controlling public policy, then the commoner takes
offense at the nobleman and calls him a feudalist.
"The case is entirely similar as regards the distinctions in respect
of property within the body of commoners.
"That the capitalist gentleman in his chamber takes pleasure in the high
degree of comfort and the great advantage which large wealth confers
upon its possessor,--nothing can be more natural, simpler or more
legitimate than that he should do so."
Incidentally, then, Gentlemen, so far am I in this pamphlet from
instigating the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the
wealthy, that, on the contrary, I expressly declare myself for the
legitimacy of such property. I explicitly declare that the
satisfaction taken in the advantages and amenities which flow from
such wealth are the most natural and legitimate things in the world.
Let me now go on with the definition referred to:
"The workingmen and the lower middle class, that is to say the class
without capital, may be wholly justified in demanding that those by whose
hands all that wealth which is the pride of our civilization is produced,
whose hands have brought forth all these products without which society
could not live for a single day--it may well be demanded that these should
be secured an ample and unfailing income, and thereby be given an
opportunity for some intellectual development, and that they be by this
means put in the way of a truly human manner of life. But, while I
am free to say that the working classes are fairly within their rights in
making these demands of the State, and to stand out stiffly for their
demands as being the essential purpose for which the State exists, yet
the workingman must never allow himself to forget that all property
that has once been acquired and is legally held must be considered lawful
and inviolable."
Such, then, is the manner and degree of my instigation of the
unpropertied class to hatred and distrust that I incontinently preach
to them the inviolability and sacredness of all property acquired by
the wealthy classes, and exhort them to respect it.
But I go on to say:
"In case the man of means is not content with the material amenities
of large wealth, but insists that possession of wealth, of capital, be
made the basis of a control to be exercised over the State, a condition
of participation in the direction of public policy and of the direction
of public affairs, then and only then does the man of means become a
bourgeois; then does he make the fact of property a legal ground of
political power; then does he stand forth as representative of a
privileged class aiming to put the imprint of its prerogative upon all
social features and institutions, just as truly as the nobility of the
Middle Ages did with respect to the basis of their privilege, landed
property."
Accordingly, in my use of the term, as I have explicitly and
painstakingly defined it, the man of means, the man of the
upper-middle class, is a _bourgeois_ in case he proceeds to set up the
essentially harmless and inoffensive fact of his large property as a
legal condition of participation in the direction of public affairs;
in short, when he proceeds to set up the ownership of capital as a
legal and political prerogative, and so abolishes the equality of the
propertied and the unpropertied classes before the law, and thereby
infringes upon the liberty and further growth of the people, in the
interest of accumulated wealth and continued upper-class mastery. Only
under these circumstances, as I particularly point out, does the
_bourgeoisie_ become a privileged class, which it otherwise, in spite
of all inequality of wealth, is not.
In my pamphlet I point out how all this has its effect through the
census rating whereby admission to a share in the direction of public
policy, through eligibility to any legislative body, is so limited by
property qualifications as to make the possession of capital a
prerequisite. I point out further that this effect follows equally
whether the property qualification is open and above-board or
under-hand, and finally that the existing three-class system of
elections, dating back to 1849, amounts to such an under-hand,
disguised property rating.
The point at which the pamphlet strikes, therefore, albeit in a purely
theoretical way, is the three-class system of elections. It makes no
attack upon the propertied classes, whose accumulated wealth, on the
contrary, I am repeatedly at pains to define as wholly incontestable,
inoffensive, inviolable and perfectly lawful.
This three-class system of elections is one of our political
institutions.
Now, this being the case, why has not the public prosecutor indicted
me under section 101 of the criminal code, "for having exposed the
measures of the State to hatred and to contempt?" To be sure, if the
prosecutor had chosen to make this charge, I should have known how to
answer him. To go into this matter today would be superfluous,
for I am not accused of this offense, and my defense would be drawn
out endlessly if I were to defend myself against charges that have
never been brought against me.
But why, among all impossible charges, does the public prosecutor
choose to bring precisely the most impossible? Why does he make this
substitution as to the point of my attack? I point out that the
three-class system of elections is an injustice because it makes an
essentially innocent difference in wealth a legal qualification for
participation in the direction of public affairs; whereupon this
envenomed accusation is brought against me that I have instigated the
unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied.
Is there, then, no remedy, Gentlemen, against such a public defamation
of one's name and fame?
Can we say that among us the introduction, of the three-class system
of elections is to be laid at the door of the propertied classes or
the commonalty? Something of that kind might be said of the French
_bourgeoisie_. In France the property qualification and rating was
introduced as long ago as the revolutionary _Assemblée Constituante_.
But the like has not been done by the German.
When the Prussian bourgeoisie came into power through the March
revolution of 1848 it introduced universal and equal suffrage by the
law of the 8th of April, 1848. The German bourgeoisie at St. Paul's
Church, Frankfort, enacted universal equal suffrage.
The three-class system of elections which we now have, was arbitrarily
imposed, imposed by the government.
Now, why does the public prosecutor shelter the government behind the
backs of the Prussian _bourgeoisie? A tout seigneur tout honneur_![57]
It is the Prussian government, not the propertied classes, that must
for all time and in the eyes of all people bear the responsibility of
this arbitrarily imposed three-class system of elections.
But, whatever may have been the reasons which decided the public
prosecutor to make this very singular substitution of grievances in
his indictment--and we may perhaps presently come to find out what his
reasons were--at any rate, this second ground of the indictment also
fails. There has been no incitement against the propertied classes of
the community; there has been no instigation against those against
whom I am accused of instigating to hatred and contempt.
The third ground on which the indictment is brought, the charge of
having endangered the public peace, fails likewise.
As to this third count:
Section 100 says: "Any person who endangers the public peace by
publicly inciting the subjects of the State to hatred or to contempt
of one another is to be punished."
Now, when the State speaks of the public peace it cannot be taken to
mean peace of mind, for the State is not a pietistic overseer
concerned about the subjects' peace of mind and the general sphere of
spiritual edification. What it looks to is the peace of the streets.
This is made quite plain by the phrase, "public peace."