It will fail shamefully through the mere reading of my pamphlet, which I most particularly commend to the bourgeoisie. It will fail before the force of my own voice; and precisely with this in view I felt called on to go so extensively into the facts of the case in my defense. We are all, bourgeoisie and laborers, members of one people, and we stand firmly together against our oppressors.
Let me now close. Upon a man who, as I have presented the matter to you, has devoted his life under the motto, "Science and the Workingmen," even a sentence which may meet him on the way will make no other impression beyond that made upon a chemist by the breaking of a retort used by him in his scientific experiments. With a momentary knitting of the brow and a reflection on the physical properties of matter, as soon as the accident is remedied he goes on with his experiments and his investigation as before.
But I appeal to you that for the sake of the nation and its honor, for the sake of science and its dignity, for the sake of the country and its liberty under the law, for the sake of your own memory as history shall preserve it, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, acquit me.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 49: The criteria which are here appealed to as working the differences of spiritual constitution between the so-called Germanic peoples and the peoples of antiquity are today questioned at more than one point. And quite legitimately so. Considered as peoples simply, the Greeks or Romans were scarcely less capable of development than the Germanic peoples. That their States, their political organizations, collapsed because of the decay of certain institutional arrangements peculiar to the social life of the times, that is a fortune in which the states of antiquity quite impartially have shared with the various States of the Germanic world. Political structures in general are capable of but a moderate degree of development. If the development proceeds beyond this critical point the result, sooner or later, is a historical cataclysm, whereby the old State is supplanted by a new form of social organization resting on a new foundation. As elements in this new foundation there may be comprised new religious or new ethical notions, but, in a general way, it is to be said that, except in the theocratic States, the rôle played by religion is only of secondary importance even in antiquity.
Socrates was not the first nor the only one in Greece who had taught "new gods." That he in particular was called on to drink the hemlock was due to reasons of State policy, which had but a very slight and unessential relation to the acts of sacrilege of which he was accused. It may be added that this Greek promulgator of new gods is among the German peoples fairly matched by John Huss and thousands of other victims of religious persecution.
Lassalle's mistake lies in this, that he seeks the motor force of development in the "spirit" of the nations, instead of looking for an explanation of their spiritual life in the peculiar circumstances which condition their development. But, in spite of this, it must be said that his conclusions as bearing upon the modern situation are for the most part substantially sound.—TRANSLATOR.]
[Footnote 50: According to this doctrine, the motions of the "Monads"—animistically conceived units of which the entire universe, organic or inorganic, was held to be constituted—were (by the fiat of God at the creation of the world) bound in a preordained sequence, in such a manner that all these motions constitute a comprehensive, harmonious series. Wherefore, all events whatever that may take place, take place as the necessary outcome of the constitution of these monads moving independently of one another.—TRANSLATOR.]
[Footnote 51: Permission to teach.]
[Footnote 52: I have fought not without glory.]