material sacrifice, is another source from which the candidates for
public office is swollen. Many sons of well-to-do peasants, who do not
fancy a return to the village and to the pursuit of their fathers, come
under this category.

As a result of all these circumstances, Germany has an infinitely more
numerous proletariat of scholars and artists than any other country, as
also a strong proletariat in the so-called liberal professions. This
proletariat is steadily on the increase, and carries the fermentation
and discontent with existing conditions into the higher strata of
society. This youth are roused and spurred to the criticism of the
existing order, and they materially aid in hastening the general work of
dissolution. Thus the existing condition of things is attacked and
undermined from all sides.

All these circumstances have contributed to cause the German Social
Democratic party to take a hand in the leadership of the giant struggle
of the future. It was German Socialists who discovered the motor laws of
modern society, and who scientifically demonstrated Socialism to be the
social form of the future. First of all Karl Marx and Frederick Engels;
next to them and firing the masses with his agitation, Ferdinand
Lassalle. Finally German Socialists are the chief pioneers of Socialist
thought among the workingmen of all nations.

Almost half a century ago--grounded on his studies of the German mind
and culture--Buckle could say that, although Germany had a large number
of the greatest thinkers, there was no country in which the chasm
between the class of the scholars and the mass of the population was as
wide. This is no longer true. It was so only so long as knowledge was
confined to learned circles that stood aloof from practical life. Since
Germany has been economically revolutionized, science was compelled to
render itself useful to practical life. Science itself became practical.
It was felt that science attained its full worth only when it became
applicable to human life; and the development of large capitalist
production compelled it thereto. All the tranches of science have been,
accordingly, strongly democratized during the last decades. The large
number of young men, educated for the higher professions, contributed to
carry science among the people; then also the general schooling, higher
to-day in Germany than in most European countries, facilitated the
popular reception of a mass of intellectual produ