Oh, let it be, disturb it not!”
Must I on your account go back on these principles? Again the poet warns me:
“Believe my word, that were a fault!”
Not for a moment do I yield to the illusion that I could persuade you; the chasm is too wide for me to be able to throw a bridge across, and I am not convinced that by doing so I should do any good. It would be a better thing if you could convert me; but hops and malt are lost on me,—I am even worse than Sighele.
The difference between us bad professors and you, Baroness, is this, that we are stating facts,—among them the fact of the “Two Kinds of Morals,”—while you are preaching to the world how it ought to be. I always listen to your preaching with great pleasure. I should have no objection, on the contrary I should be very happy, if the world would change in accordance with your ideas. Only I am afraid that it does not depend on the world to slough off its skin, and that your moralizing is in reality a complaint lodged against the dear God in heaven, who made the world as it is. Yes, if you could stir him to bring out his work in a second revised edition, that would be really a success!
By all means believe that if the world will only “have the will,” then everything will come out all right! Because of taking that very standpoint my son is in prison in Plötzensee. He, too, could not comprehend that the State is so “unmoral” as to let the unemployed go hungry while it has control of bread and nourishment in ample sufficiency, this being in direct contravention of the commandment about love for the neighbor. And so he went forth and gave the State a castigation, calling it a “band of exploiters,” a “legally organized horde of bandits.” From the standpoint of “the one and only morality” he was perfectly right. Since he has been in prison I have refrained from attacking this standpoint to his face. Why? Because this enthusiasm for this “one and only morality,” the bringing about of which he has been striving for, makes him happy and enables him easily to endure all the trials and privations of his dungeon. And just for the same reason I have no idea of attacking to your face the standpoint which you accept; for in your endeavor to make this clear to all the world you are certainly finding your greatest happiness. How could I satisfy my conscience if I willingly disturbed your happiness?
Go on your way, my dear Baroness, in peace; do not worry about the Sigheles; do not read Gumplowicz’s “Conflict of the Races”; it might cause you sad hours; and do remain always what you are,—the champion of a beautiful idea! In order to fulfill that mission stick to the persuasion that this idea is the truth, the sole and only truth. And of this belief may no professorial chatter ever rob you!
With this wish, I remain with the sincerest respect
Your most faithful
Gumplowicz