in his "Wilhelm
Meister." Were Napoleon I. born ten years later, he never would have
been Emperor of France. Without the war of 1870-1871, Gambetta had never
become what he did become. Place the naturally gifted child of
intelligent parents among savages, and he becomes a savage. _Whatever a
man is, society has made him._ Ideas are not creations that spring from
the head of the individual out of nothing, or through inspiration from
above; they are products of social life, of the _Spirit of the Age_,
raised in the head of the individual. An Aristotle could not possibly
have the ideas of a Darwin, and a Darwin could not choose but think
otherwise than an Aristotle. Man thinks according as the Spirit of the
Age, i. e., his surroundings and the phenomena that they present to him
drive him to think. Hence the experience of different people often
thinking simultaneously the same thing, of the same inventions and
discoveries being made simultaneously in places far apart from each
other. Hence also the fact that an idea, uttered fifty years too early,
leaves the world cold; fifty years later, sets it ablaze. Emperor
Sigismund could risk breaking his word to Huss in 1415 and order him
burned in Constance; Charles V., although a more violent fanatic, was
compelled to allow Luther to depart in peace from the Reichstag at Worms
in 1521. Ideas are, accordingly, the product of combined social causes
and social life. What is true of society in general, is true in
particular of the several classes that, at given historic epochs,
constitute society. As each class has its special interests, it also has
its special ideas and views, that lead to those class struggles of which
recorded history is full, and that reach their climax in the class
antagonisms and class struggles of modern days. Hence, it depends not
merely upon the age in which a man lives, but also upon the social
stratum of a certain age in which he lived or lives, and whereby his
feelings, thoughts and actions are determined.

Without modern society, no modern ideas. That is obvious. With regard to
the future social Order, it must be furthermore added that the means
whereby the individual develops are the property of society. Society
can, accordingly, not be bound to render special homage to what itself
made possible and is its own product.

So much on the qualification of manual and brain work. It follows that
there can be no real distinction between "higher" and "lower" ma