"Material and intellectual interests go hand in hand. The one can not exist without the other. Between the two there is the same connection as between body and soul: to separate them is to bring on death."—v. Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat."
"The best life, as well for the individual in particular, as for the State in general, is that life in which virtue is decked out with external goods also, sufficient to make possible an active indulgence in beautiful and good actions."—Aristotle's "Politics."
[213] When Eugene Richter in his "Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) repeats the old wornout phrase about the Socialists aiming at a "Penitentiary State"—that the question is no longer about a "State" will have by this time become clear to our readers—he presupposes the existence of a "State" or social order that will violate its own interests. A new State or social order radically different from the preceding one can not possibly be produced at will; to imagine such a thing would be to ignore and deny all the laws of development, obedient to which State and Society have hitherto risen and developed. Eugen Richter and those who share his views may take comfort: if Socialism really implies the silly and unnatural aims imputed to it by them, it will go to pieces, and without the aid of the "Irrelehren" of Richter. But it happens that there is no political party that stands as squarely and logically upon the evolutionary field as the Social Democratic.
Quite as unfounded as all the other objections are the remarks of Eugene Richter: "For a social condition, such as the Socialists want, the people must be angels." As is well known, there are no angels, nor do we need any. Partly are men influenced by conditions, and partly are conditions influenced by men, and the latter will be increasingly the case in the measure that men learn to know the nature of the social system that they themselves rear, and in the measure that the experience thus gathered is consciously applied by them by corresponding changes in their social organization,—and that is Socialism. What we need is not other people, but wiser and more intelligent people than most of them are to-day. It is with the end in view of making people wiser and more intelligent that we agitate, Herr Richter, and that we publish works like this one.
[214] It is surprising that, considering the fathomless blockishness of our adversaries, none has yet claimed that in Socialist society everyone would receive an equal portion of food and an equal quantity of linen and clothing so as to "crown the work of uniformity." Such a claim is quite stupid enough to expect its being made by our opponents.
[215] Fourier made this the subject of a brilliant argument, although he ran into utopianism in the elaboration of his ideas.
[216] Condorcet demands in his plan of education: "Education must be free, equal, general, bodily, mental, industrial and political, and it must aim at real and actual equality."
Likewise Rousseau in his "Political Economy": "Above all, education must be public, equal and mixed, for the purpose of raising men and citizens."
Aristotle also demands: "Seeing the State has but one object, it must also provide one and the same education for all its members. The care hereof must be the concern of the State and not a private affair."
[217] Eugene Richter among them, in his "Irrelehren."