"You will do us no harm," said Balder. "Let us take the risk. What could they find here? As I know Edwin--"
"I too would see them enter with the greatest composure," observed Edwin smiling. "No, Franzel, your fears are visionary so far as we are concerned. Can you not, in case of necessity, even swear that I have no tendencies toward socialism, but on the contrary am an incorrigible aristocrat, for which you have often reproached me?"
"And if they question you about your catechism, will you deny it? Will you deny that our principles are the same, and that we only differ in opinion as to whether the times are yet fully ripe for them? You are silent; now you see--"
"Scientific convictions are somewhat different from public speaking, and the police, thank God, no longer meddle with the freedom of thought of a private tutor of philosophy. But since we have come to this point--once more and, as it seems, for the last time: do you take me for a coward, Franzel?"
"You! How can you even--"
"Or do you not believe that I would be drawn and quartered, rather than deny my convictions? Well then, if you think me a man of whose friendship you have no cause to be ashamed, let me tell you this: what you are about to do, appears to me little more judicious, than if you wanted to set before an infant that had not yet cut its teeth, a roast chicken instead of its mother's milk or some of Liebig's preparations, with which it had hitherto appeased its hunger. If any one attempted to do that to my child, I should certainly forbid him the house, or at least endeavor to make his premature diet harmless."
"You talk so, because you don't know the people," Franzelius burst forth, "They are no longer children, their teeth are cut, and their eyes open; where this is not the case, we will help them, offer hard food that they may cut their teeth on it, instead of cooking the traditional children's porridge, perpetually lulling them to sleep with baby talk, when they are grown men, and the leading strings of guardians--"
"Don't get angry unnecessarily!" Edwin interrupted. "Who of us wishes to check the natural growth of the mind, instead of aiding it according to its powers? But what you have in view, is a forced, premature culture, your demagogical enthusiasm is a hot house, and that is why I repeat: make no useless sacrifices, which must not only ruin yourself, but many of your foster children. You cannot carve an Apollo from every block of wood; not every one who ties on a leather apron and earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, will be able to grasp the idea of the fall of man which a follower of Kant or Spinoza can form. Why, when there are so many crying wants of a coarser nature to be satisfied, do you desire to create needs for our less gifted brothers? Why show them what they lack, when, after they have with difficulty learned to feel their needs, you can only give them such very doubtful assistance? You aim to produce an artificial thirst, and then all you can offer them to assuage it, is a pear; for the fountains that flow for us, will, as matters now appear, long remain sealed to them."
"Edwin is right!" exclaimed Mohr, speaking for the first time without his sarcastic curl of the lip. "The people are asleep, dreaming all sorts of things, and Franzelius Gracchus goes about like Macbeth, and murders sleep. I've never understood how anybody can be so inhuman as to rouse a person who is slumbering. But that's the preaching of these humanitarians! You're just as selfish as the priests. For the sake of making the people see, you drum them out of bed at three o'clock in the morning."
"And suppose they are grateful to us for it? Suppose a nightmare has oppressed or bad dreams tormented them?" exclaimed the printer vehemently. "And that's just the case with the people. Their sleep under the night cap of superstition is no longer so sound and refreshing as it was a hundred years ago. All sorts of voices have startled them, and now they are slumbering in the dusk of morning and do not know whether it is time to rise. But why do I talk of this to you? You don't understand the times, you've never felt the pulse throbs of humanity stir your heart, with all your knowledge and good, intentions, you're--"